Once famous for its healthy air, today a modern town that preserves agro-pastoral traditions and produces excellent olive oil and various types of fruit especially cherries. The urban center rises where the plain gives way to the foothills of Mount Linas. Its wealth is its natural beauty: valleys of Coxinas and Villascema, lush forests, including the forest of Montimannu. The area is traversed by streams that form spectacular waterfalls. The best known, a holiday destination of the poet D’Annunzio, is sa Spendula, a ‘blade’ of water that cleaves the rock between oleanders and holm oaks, making three consecutive jumps. In the paths of the Mount Linas-Oridda-Marganai plateau complex, the spectacle continues with the waterfalls of the rio Linas, Piscina Irgas. Villacidro is anchored in the values of the past, celebrated by writer Giuseppe Dessì, its most illustrious citizen, to whom the literary park is dedicated. The archaeological museum Villa Leni, once a granary mount, displays evidence of a territory inhabited from the Neolithic, then in the Copper and Bronze ages (the Nuragic village of Cottega and several nuraghi) and in Roman times (a necropolis and remains of two baths), when perhaps the first settlement of villa citra, ‘villa on this side of the river’, arose. In town and countryside, religious buildings include the church of San Sisinnio (17th century), nestled among centuries-old olive groves, and the parish church of Santa Barbara, of 16th-century origin. Of its original Gothic-Catalan layout, the bell tower and capilla mayor with star vaulting are preserved. During the 1700s it was enriched with prestigious furnishings, such as the high altar. Also worth visiting is the public washhouse, inaugurated in 1893: a roof supported by cast-iron columns protects 36 basins lined with trachyte. The historic center is characterized by buildings made of stone and unfired earth; a process of recovery and enhancement of the historic center has been under way for several years.