Bosa

The area has been inhabited since prehistoric times, as domus de janas rock tombs and nuraghi show. A Phoenician inscription, now lost, may record the people of the place as early as the 9th century BC, though several scholars doubt it, and under Rome Bosa was a municipium near the mouth of the Temo. In the Middle Ages it was a provincial capital of the Giudicato of Logudoro, and its first cathedral, San Pietro, was built in the 11th century beside the old Roman bridge.

In the 13th century the Malaspina family built the castle on the hill of Serravalle, and the population gradually moved up from the valley to the slopes below it, founding the present town. The Crown of Aragon took over in the 14th century; in 1328 Bosa was granted to Hugh II of Arborea, and in 1478 the castle was the last refuge of Leonardo de Alagón, the marquis of Oristano, before his capture. In 1499 Ferdinand the Catholic made Bosa a free royal city. In the 16th century, to keep out a French fleet, the townspeople blocked the mouth of the Temo with boulders, which ruined the port and began centuries of flooding. The 17th century brought a great flood in 1606, plague and Ottoman raids.

In the 19th century leather tanning made Bosa the leading tanning centre of Sardinia, with 28 tanneries counted in 1834; the walls came down, the town spread towards the sea, a bridge over the Temo opened in 1871 and a railway to Macomer in 1888. The tanneries closed in 1962. The Temo's highest recorded flow came in the flood of 1953. In 2005 Bosa moved from the province of Nuoro to that of Oristano, and the coast road to Alghero has since brought a steady flow of visitors.

Bosa has an urban character that sets it apart from other places in Sardinia, and it is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia, the association of the most beautiful small towns in Italy. Its emblem is filet lace, su lauru 'osincu, worked on a netted ground in Sardinian motifs such as peacocks, pomegranates and ears of wheat; in the early 20th century it was sold as far as Rome and New York, and it now appears in clothing, jewellery and souvenirs as well as on church altars.

The carnival, carrasegare 'osincu, is among the most distinctive in Sardinia and has drawn the attention of anthropologists and theatre scholars. On the morning of Shrove Tuesday the attitadoras, dressed in black with faces darkened by burnt cork, parade in mock mourning for s'Attitidu; at dusk masked figures wrapped in white sheets carry lights through the streets, calling for Gioltzi. In early August the statue of the Madonna del Mare is carried along the river by a procession of decorated boats, a devotion recorded since 1689.

The town has a literary and artistic past: Gerolamo Araolla, the leading poet in the Sardinian language of the Spanish era, wrote his works here in the 16th century, and the artist Melkiorre Melis was born in Bosa in 1889. A local saying holds that in Bosa, if it rains, they let it rain.

Bosa has about 7,300 inhabitants and has stayed at roughly that size for a long time — around 8,600 in 1971 and 7,900 in 2001. Agriculture and fishing remain important, thanks to the fertile river valley near the coast, alongside tourism, which has grown since the opening of the coastal road to Alghero and the rise in traffic through Alghero's airport.

Life is split between the old town and the newer districts. In the second half of the 20th century many families left the cramped houses of Sa Costa for larger new quarters, often built on the floor of the river valley, and the town extended west along Viale Giovanni XXIII and Viale Alghero. Bosa Marina grew up at the river mouth as the seaside district, and in summer the southern end of its beach still hosts children's holiday camps from across Italy.

Flooding shapes current debates. The narrowing of the river mouth, worsened by the wall linking the Isola Rossa to the mainland, has caused repeated floods, and about 70 per cent of the municipality's land is now classed in the highest flood-hazard category, which, along with the economic crisis, has brought the building boom that long drove the local economy to a halt.

Bosa's cooking draws on the river, the sea — which supplies sea bass, dentex, gilthead bream, lobster and sea urchins — and the fertile valley. The signature fish dish is s'azada alla bosana (agliata in Italian), ray or catshark dressed with a sauce of oil, garlic, parsley, peeled tomatoes and vinegar; eel, stewed or roasted, comes from the Temo. With the growth of tourism, restaurants have also made lobster cooked Bosa-style and a Bosa-style shellfish soup local favourites.

Older dishes include sa fae a landinu, broad beans with several kinds of meat and wild fennel, eaten at carnival; s'algazinu, small snails dressed with garlic; and su baosu, larger snails usually in tomato sauce. Among first courses are sos culunzones de regotu, ravioli filled with ricotta and spinach, and sos cicciones, short semolina pasta served with ricotta or tomato sauce. Sweets include frisciolas, long fritters made at carnival, and tiricas, pastry wrapped around a filling of honey and saba, a cooked grape must.

The town is best known for Malvasia di Bosa, a DOC white wine made in fortified (sweet or dry) and naturally sweet styles, whose quality is recognised well beyond Sardinia; one of its producers featured in the 2004 documentary Mondovino, shown in competition at Cannes.