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The history of San Teodoro

Piazza Gallura (foto L. Pinducciu)

The population of San Teodoro’s territory goes back them to the ancient times and shows through the centuries a thread of almost uninterrupted continuity. As it turns out at least from the state of the archaeological discoveries for the rest of Gallura‘s area, the first human takeovers of the San Teodoro’ s sour, favourites by the geographic position and climate factors and environments , they can be enrolled to the Neolithic one, and above all to the Eneolithic (2000 – 1500 a. C.). Some hypogeum deposits, remembered by ours grandparents and incautiously destroyed the first decades of the nine hundred , shelters under cliff “cònchi” in zone Aresula testify the presence in the territory of ancient inhabitants. Moreover, along the right river of the pond, to approximately half road between “lu tacconi “and “the foca manna “ some tips and splinters of obsidian were recovered to the end of the fifty years evidently used by the ancient inhabitants in the hunting. Traces of the Nuragic period are present to Nuragheddu and to Ottiolu , today in Budoni’s common, that a time made part of the San Teodoro ‘s territory. Just for the geographic position and on the base of some discoveries we were authorizes to think that the san Teodoro’ s area, extended on the sea to south of Olbia, has been attended in Phoenician (880 a.C.) and Punic period (VI sec a.C.). In the 384 a.C. the Romans defeats by the Carthaginians, they undertook an assiduous work of pressure on the island in the attempt to replace itself to the old dominators. In the 259 a.C. the consul Lucio Cornelio Scipione, disembarked with its legions near Olbia, defeated the Sardinians- Punics and started the roman penetration in Sardinia. The enterprise was not easy for the courageous resistance of the inside’s tribes who contrasted with every means the roman occupation. In the 215 a.C. the consul Manlio Torquato routed to Cornus the army of Ampsicora, allied of the Carthaginians, but the guerrilla of the mountain populations still continued along until the 111 a. C. when Marco Cecilio Metello had reason of the last rioters and the Romanization of the island did not find more obstacles. They came opened roads, ports, constructed monuments, aqueducts, cultivated the campaigns that became populous of rural small aggregates, “vici” and “villae”. It goes back to roman age the inhabited centre of “coclearia”, that roses up in the present site of San Teodoro, between the necks of Citai, Lu Casteddu and the pond along the coast-road “karalibus – Olbiam per oram “, that it traced in great part the tracing of the present SS 125, east Sardinian. The “city” of coclearia that had its port in the site today called Niùloni must have a sure importance in the imperial period, as they testify numerous discoveries of dishes, amphorae, grinders, coins, jewels, rests of constructions, flat tiles etc. Important discoveries interest the feature of sea that bathes the territory of San Teodoro. Not a lot far away from San Teodoro, in the island of Molara, was exiled Papa Ponziano (235 d.C)and the priest Ippolito so is not risked to think that also the next populations have been between first coming to contact with Christianity. After the fall the roman empire of West also the provinces knew the barbaric invasions: in the 455 d. C. the Vandals, after to have put to iron and fire Rome, invade the Sardinia and they hold it under their ferocious dominion until the 553 d.C. when they came routes from the general Belisario, the island passes under the roman empire of East. San Teodoro, or better the centre that then rose on this site one, as it demonstrates also the onomastics referable to the Christian church of East, it was inhabited centre Byzantine. In the 1962, during the construction of a house near Sardinia way was found a tremisse of gold Byzantine of the emperor Foca. In the medieval period the site in which the roman city rose and then the inhabited centre Byzantine was occupied by Offolle, important centre of the Orfili ‘s “Curatoria” , and perhaps same centre of the “Curatoria”, in the Gallura’ s Judicatus. Traces of this period are still found on the land and widely documented through the memory of ours ancestors, beyond that in the chorographia of the Fara (1595 d.C.) ,and later on in the route of “la Marmora”, and in the dictionary of “Casalis-Angius” etc, from Pais etc. As it known the four Judicati are coevals of the maritime republics, and they were formed in Sardinia around to the IX century, when the separation from Byzantium is emphasized as a result of the Arabic incursions, cannot guarantee the protection of the island. The Gallura’ s Judicatus which belongs San Teodoro (in that moment Offolle, Ovodè and then Oviddè) had for capital Civita, the present Olbia. The Judicatus enters very soon in the Pisana orbit: in first of 1200 Elena of Gallura, in spite of the fair opposition of Pope Innocenzo III brides Lamberto Visconti; the son Baldo in the 1238 leaves the Judicatus to its cousin Giovanni Visconti, to which in the 1275 d.C. succeeds Nino “judge Nin kind” remembered by Dante. To the dead of Nino in the 1296 d.C. the Judicatus comes confiscated from the common of Pisa. To such period can be enrolled the road Pisana “uttaru pisanu” that from the neighbourhoods of Pedres’s castle carried to the San Teodoro ‘s plain, in the vicinities of pond passing in stratums of Almuttu Mount. In the 1323 d.C. has beginning the Aragonese conquest of island that completes one in the 1400. In the 1479, when Ferdinando the Catholic marries Isabella of Castiglia and unify one the several kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula, is born Spain, the Sardinia becomes Spanish; and the Gallura, dismembered, comes assigned to the several feudatories. They are difficult years, disappear from Sardinian geography hundred of countries; afflicted from the recurrent scarcities, from the Saracen incursions, from the pestilences and the malaria, the Gallura is become depopulated. The last news on Offòlle (Oviddè, San teodoro) go back to 1348 d.C. , then silence; the Sardinian historian Francesco Fara around to 1959 describes the territory of San Teodoro like one the desert land. Traces of a return to the life will be had to the end of 1600, with the first rural takeovers of the tonnages: around to the church of campaign dedicated to San Teodoro and reconstructed, as it turns out from some papers conserved to the archives of Tempio ’s diocese, little before 1647, revives the first nucleus of Oviddè, for work of Tempio ‘s colonists originals and of near villages as well as of Corsica ‘s extraction. In the 1720, as a result of the London ‘s treaty of the 1718, the Sardinia passes to Savoia between the 1837 and the 1839 comes abolished the feudal regimen, and Oviddè administratively assigned to Posada, it is also slowly, it grows and becomes the point of aggregation of immense sour one to south of Olbia. In the first the nine hundred decades it claims the autonomy from Posada‘s common, but also in the 1959 manages to the detach itself. In the 1927, meantime, in the fascist age, these land comes torn to Gallura and included in the within of the new province “littoria “of Nuoro.