Tharros the first port in which landed the first peoples from the East

In Phoenician times, Tharros was one of the main ports of Sardinia. Located between Capo San Marco and the hillside of Su Murru Mannu, around the XI century B.C. it was one of the first points of contact with the navigators who came from the East (a long time before the Phoenicians, who landed only during the VIII century B.C.), as demonstrate some findings found in Tharros.

The traders of Cartagine as well, found in Sardinia an important outlet for the exchange of precious artefacts. Not only: they introduced to the local populations even new cultivations (in the opinion of some students even the grapevine from which the Vernaccia wine is produced ).

Only as a result of the pressure of the Assyrians, in the VIII century B.C., the Phoenicians decided to send their first settlers to the most inviting territories from the commercial and the extractive point of view (the mines of metals were very sought-after). Therefore was found Tharros, which became shortly a rich and flourishing city, even if professors think that – contrarily to what it was always believed – it was not more important than the near Othoca.

Where rose the nuraghic village of Su Murru Mannu, was erected the tophet, the sacred place in which were deposited the cinerary urns. The inhabited center developed beyond the limits up to now discovered, to the extent that Tharros became, after the Carthaginian conquest during the second half of the VI century B.C., one of the most important towns of the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, in the following centuries, a large part of the material was used to build the churches and the houses of Oristano and the other centers of the province.

The Roman came into possession of the city and of the territory, after the mercenaries revolt in the 238 B.C.: many are the evidences of the Roman period in this archaeological site, from the thermal baths to the aqueduct, from the roads to the houses, until the temples and the necropolis. During the upper-medieval age, the inhabitants abandoned progressively Tharros, by that time fallen under the assault of the Barbarians.