Ingurtosu

Ingurtosu is a fraction of the municipality of Arbus which hosted, together with Montevecchio, one of the most important mines in Sardinia. Its name derives from su gurturgiu, the bearded vulture, a vulture that populated the skies of this area. Today it is a semi-ruined and almost deserted village but in the past, when it was inhabited until the end of the sixties, it had come to host almost five thousand people, serving as the management center of the Ingurtosu mine and the nearby Gennamari, both of which were part of the mining complex called vein of Montevecchio, from which lead, zinc and silver were extracted.

The mine, which had begun its mining activity in 1855, reached its maximum expansion at the beginning of the 20th century. The first crisis, with the dismissal of many workers, occurred in 1943. After the war the activity resumed, but the decline had already begun and in 1968 the Ingurtosu mine was definitively closed. In the mining village of Ingurtosu there was the management building , called "The castle", built around 1870, in a neo-medieval style, in imitation of a German building, in a dominant position with respect to the rest of the complex, which includes the homes of employees, the church, the shop, the post office, the cemetery and even a hospital.