Sardara has always been a strategic crossroads, once the border between the giudicati of Arborea and Calari. Symbolizing the giudicale age is the castle of Monreale, which towers over the hills south of the town. Originally composed of a keep, eight towers and walls, today you will admire the mighty walls and, inside, the remains of the medieval village. Built perhaps around 1000 and attested in 1309, it was decisive in the wars against the Catalan-Aragonese. The judges of Arborea Mariano IV and Eleonora stayed there.
Sardara’s history is linked, today as in Antiquity, to the hot springs: the Aquae Neapolitanae generated a populous Roman center (2nd-1st century BC). In the late 19th century they were incorporated into the modern thermal baths of Sardara. The waters gush forth at temperatures between 50 and 68 degrees, beneficial and healing. Prehistoric evidence abounds. The most important is the sanctuary of St. Anastasia, a Nuragic cult site active between the 16th and 7th centuries B.C., characterized by a sacred well made of basalt and limestone. Cult use did not end: this is documented by Punic ceramics and the remains of a Byzantine building under the church of St. Anastasia (rebuilt in the 15th century), which gives the sanctuary its name. Around it an enclosure encloses a village that developed largely under the houses of Sardara: it was the largest among the thirty Nuragic settlements scattered over hills and plains. Furnishings, including a nuraghe-shaped altar and artifacts of terracotta, lead and bronze, were found in a hut and are displayed in the Villa Abbas museum. Suggestive is the historic center: cobblestone streets and stone and earthen houses with fine portals. Historic manor houses and old churches stand out. The parish church of the Blessed Virgin of the Assumption, dating from the early 1600s, features carved reliefs, a pipe organ (1758), marble altar, and the retable of Our Lady of Itria. The early 14th-century church of St. Gregory the Great bears witness to the transition from Romanesque to Gothic.