Monteleone Rocca Doria, located in northwestern Sardinia, stands on a steep rocky hill, surrounded on three sides by the Temo Lake, which itself serves as a fortification, just as it did in medieval times, when the powerful Genoese Doria family also built a Romanesque-style church there in the 13th century, dedicated to St. Stephen (currently a parish church), using it as a private chapel for the Doria family, together with a castle-fortress of which significant evidence still remains, along with the presence of the giudicessa Eleonora d’Arborea, following her marriage to Brancaleone Doria, lord of the medieval Borgo.
An area, evidently, devoted to urbanization since remote times, as evidenced by the presence of several nuraghi and a Punic archaeological site of great interest, being the only Punic settlement in northern Sardinia.
This natural garrison of the territory constituted a “settlement reason,” including the medieval encastellation by the powerful Genoese Doria family and the subsequent establishment of the Borgo on the southern side of the Rocca, established in the 13th century by Mariano IV of Arborea. Monteleone was then able to resist the Aragonese siege for over two years until 1436. As a result of the siege, the King of Aragon had the top part of the castle dismantled and the village destroyed, the inhabitants of which took refuge in part in Villanova, from where some returned to rebuild the village, which retains the urban structure and characters of a late medieval settlement.
The very name of the Municipality of Monteleone Rocca Doria, summarizes the environmental and historical-cultural values, represented by the vestiges of the past, still present in the local material and intangible culture. Walking through the streets of the Borgo, one can admire, among many: the medieval Castle-Fortress of the Dorias dating back to the 13th century, two 14th-century churches within the matrix center, a Punic site, a museum on traditional bread-making, the lake located at the foot of the Rocca, the vie ferrate on the rock face, an adventure park and an open-air theater, made inside disused quarries, with panoramic views of the lake, and much more.
