Ingurtosu is a hamlet of Arbus municipality and together with Montevecchio, is one of the most important Sardinian mine. Its name comes from the Sardinian name of a bird “gutturgiu”, the beared vulture which lived in this area. Nowadays, it is a ruined village where only few people live but in the past it was populated until the end of the ’60s by nearly 5 thousand people. It was the mining managerial centre of Ingurtosu and Gennamari, which were part of the greater mining complex called Vein of Montevecchio, from which lead, zinc and silver were extracted. The mine, which started its activity in 1855, joined its maximum expansion at the beginning of the XX century. The first crisis, followed by the dismissal of the workers, began in 1943. After the war, the exploitation started again but the decline had by then begun and in 1968 the Mine of Ingurtosu was definetly closed. In Ingurtosu there is the managing building, called “The Castle”, built nearly in 1870, in neo-Gothic style by imitating a German palace and located in a dominant position in comparison to the rest of the village made up of employees’ houses, the church, the shop, the cemetery and the hospital, too.
