The small Museum at Cabras which holds some of the statues from Mont'e Prama (the others may be seen in Cagliari).
The full-size stone statues at Mont’e Prama were discovered underground at the site of a necropolis close to a nuraghe. They have been described by English-language experts as ‘one of the most remarkable discoveries made anywhere on Italian soil in the [20th] century’ and ‘perhaps the most extraordinary find of the century in the realm of art history.’ Yet they remain little known because research and excavations are still ongoing.
They were found in 1974 on a hill between the lagoon of Cabras and the sea where the existence of miniature palm trees explains the name of the location, the ‘Hill of Palms’. It was not a massive single monument like many in Sardinia, with what appeared at first to be a series of sacred wells linked along a ridge by vertical stele-like stones like pieces of a domino set. It seems that the warrior figures had once looked down across the landscape, before being smashed and pillaged by invaders anxious to destroy the power they symbolized.
Four statues from Mont'e Prama in the Museum at Cabras, near Oristano