Santuario Prenuragico di Monte d'Accoddi

From a distance, Monte d'Accoddi looks like an odd little hill rising out of the flat farmland of the Nurra plain, a few kilometres outside Sassari on the way to Porto Torres. Get closer and the hill turns out to be something else entirely: a massive stepped platform of stacked limestone blocks, fronted by a long earthen ramp, that has puzzled visitors since it was uncovered in the 1950s. The main monument is a terrace altar in the shape of a truncated pyramid: a rectangular platform measuring approximately 37 × 30 meters, standing about ten meters high today, reached by a 42-meter-long ramp. Its silhouette is so unusual for the western Mediterranean that comparisons to Mesopotamian ziggurats come up constantly, even though no direct connection between the two has ever been established. Around the platform, the flat, open landscape hides more traces of the same ancient community: standing stones, an offering slab and rock-cut tombs known locally as domus de janas, scattered across a countryside that has clearly been sacred ground for a very long time.