Su Nuraxi of Barumini belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 1500 BCE at Barumini, Sardinia. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
A UNESCO nuraghe-village: central tower, four-lobe bastion, and a huddle of circular huts that grew for centuries.
How it was made
Bronze Age to Iron Age occupation. The complex is a diagram of a society that thought in circles of stone.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
It is the nuragic civilisation’s flagship — a wonder without a king’s name attached.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 1500 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 71 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.