The present site inside the village called the Giardinetto, in the early 1970s, was an area destined to become a parking lot, later appropriated by the founders of the artistic movement “Paese Museo,” led by Pinuccio Sciola, who furnished it at first with agricultural tools, carts and old millstones; in the 1980s it was transformed into a veritable public artwork with huge trachyte boulders, transported and carved on site, creating a kind of open-air Nuragic theater with dolmens and structures echoing megalithic constructions from the Nuragic period.
Strolling through the Giardinetto, as it is now known by locals, is like taking a trip
among inviting stone sofas and tall menhirs arranged in a circle that recall the Celtic cults of Stonehenge, or imagining dramaturgies on a stage made entirely of stone.
San Sperate also offers visitors the chance to walk its streets adorned with numerous murals.
The mud walls, which documented the poverty of the village, became the ideal support for telling other stories.
Putting his hand to that project was Pinuccio Sciola, who, with the support of lifelong friends, began to lime the walls of the streets in the late 1960s.
The desire to communicate new messages through image was very strong and those white walls represented a canvas to be painted.
In a short time San Sperate became a center of interest for many personalities from the world of entertainment, art and Italian and foreign culture.
The initial idea of Paese Museo was enthusiastically welcomed by Foiso Fois and Liliana Canu, Giorgio Princivalle and Gaetano Brundu, Nando Pintus, Giovanni Thermes and Franco Putzolu.
Later, many foreign artists arrived: the painter Hansi Bhon, from Germany came Rainer Pfur and Elke Reuter, from Holland Walter Jansen, from Switzerland Orto Melger, from Mexico Josè Zuniga and Corrado Dominiguez.
At present the village is a constantly changing workshop with more than four hundred open-air works.
