THE NURAGHE Bronzea marvels

Drive any distance along a Sardinian road and you cannot fail to notice strange stone structures dotted across the landscape. These are prehistoric drystone dwellings called nuraghe (nuraxe) and there are about 7 000 scattered across the Mediterranean island.

Once you start to look out for them they appear everywhere — sometimes dilapidated, occasionally so well preserved you can only wonder at the architectural nous of our predecessors. Named after the people who built them, they were coners almost 15 m high. It seemed interlaced: if you pulled out one stone, would the whole thing collapse?

With light flooding through the doorway into the main chamber on ground level, it was possible to see the inside of a stone room where a fire would have been made in the centre for warmth and cooking. Three niches in the walls suggest that items were stored there. A flight of stone steps led up the round wall like the inside of a snail shell. This was pitch dark.

On the first floor a window aperture let in light and there were views across the surrounding landscape.

The original structure would have gone up another floor and been finished off with a roof.

There are similar structures in Haut Provence, built the same way. Around the time of their construction, the people populating Sardinia were trading with Corsica and France, so clearly architectural exchange was taking place, too. Research reveals that this style of tholos roof — also called a corbelled ceiling — was found in Ancient Greece in the Bronze Age, as can be seen in the tholos tombs at Mycenae.

The Nuraghe Losa outside the town of Abbasanta is a large complex and includes the remains of several towers.

Built of basalt blocks, it is estimated to be 3 500 years old.

In Santa Cristina, outside the town of Paulilatino, is a well which was used for religious purposes — the Nuraghic people worshipped the water goddess — and 25 steps descend 7m into the well.

The precision with which these tapering steps are cut, as well as the design of the sides and roof of the structure, bring to mind a contemporary architect having completed a recent commission. To consider that this was built so very long ago is astonishing. Madeleine Morrow

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NURAGHE (NURAXE) Some 7 000 structures can be found around Sardinia