Cammini dello Spirito della Sardegna

In the west-central part of Sardinia, between the Barigadu and the Guilcer, a network of trails crosses the inland territory following routes that were not born of contemporary cartography but of devotion. These are the Cammini dello Spirito (Paths of the Spirit), a system of devotional itineraries connecting 71 sacred sites scattered across the island — rural sanctuaries, country churches, sites tied to the liturgical calendar — through a cooperation project involving seven GALs (Local Action Groups) of Sardinia, including the GAL Barigadu Guilcer and the GAL Nuorese Baronia, lead partner of the initiative, funded under the Rural Development Programme 2014-2022.

Ghilarza, a municipality of the Barigadu in the province of Oristano, sits within this system as a territorial point of reference. The town rises in a sub-region marked by oak forests, Mediterranean scrub, and the presence of Lake Omodeo, one of the largest artificial basins in Europe. The landscape surrounding Ghilarza is layered: domus de janas (rock-cut tombs), tombe dei giganti (giants' tombs) and nuraghi emerge from the vegetation, while the devotional paths overlap much older routes, following a logic of crossing the land that predates any tourism planning.

The structure of the Cammini dello Spirito is organised into distinct geographical sections — from the Barbagia di Bitti to the Ogliastra, from the Goceano to the Logudoro, through to the area around the lake and further inland — each with its own resting points and places of worship. These are not museified routes: many of these rural sanctuaries are still the setting for patronal feasts and rites tied to the religious calendar, practices that local communities keep alive without interruption. The physical path and the devotional dimension overlap without one absorbing the other.

The project involved historical research and the mapping of sites, with the aim of making accessible itineraries that were in part already walked by local worshippers but had never been organised into a coherent offering. Cooperation among the GALs made it possible to share knowledge and methods on a regional scale, building a network that crosses different geographical and cultural contexts united by the same structure of popular devotion. Claudia Sedda, director of the GAL Barigadu Madurese Gennargentu, and its president Gian Cristian Melis have stressed how the creation of this network responds to a need for recognition that starts with the communities before the tourism market.

What the Cammini dello Spirito reveal, to those who walk them, is the extent to which Sardinian popular religiosity has shaped the land in a concrete and lasting way. Every rural sanctuary, every country church reachable on foot through scrubland or pasture, is a point where collective practice has left its mark on the landscape. The slow, sustainable tourism the project intends to promote is not a frame added from outside, but the form most consistent with how these places can be approached by those who do not belong to the communities that inhabit them.