The history of Su Furriadroxu
A furriadroxu is the typical farmer house with courtyard of the villages of the Campidano. The urban structure of agricultural Sardiniadidn’t foresee farmer houses spread isolated around the countryside, all was concentrated in the village. Than the house was the place where after a long day in the fields, the farmer went back. In Sardinian the verb “furriai – furriare” means go back home, from here the comes word furriadroxu, that means the place where one go back.
Su Furriadroxu is situated in the street named today via XXIV maggio, which before to acquire an Italian name, used to be called s’arruga de su soddu, that means street of the penny (Penny lane!!). Unfortunately the change of the toponymy made loose the memory of the identity of the places, which in stead are well recognizable in many other places around Europe.
The streets and the places originated their names from their function, from the people who used to live there, or maybe from the presence of some ruins of the past.
Particularly our street takes the name from a curious fact: after a day of fishing, the cagliaritan fishermen, who moored their boats at the mouth of the rio Pula, used to come here to exchange part of the fish whit the local agricultural products of the fertile fields of Pula, and so they used to scream : c’mon, the fish at one penny!”. A very convenient price, isn’t it?
The origin of the first implant of the house is certainly very old. From the acquisition act made by the grandmother of the actual owner, a lady called Felicita Fuedda, transaction that dates back to 1923, results that the house had only two rooms, probably the kitchen and the bedroom, and an adjacent local (the actual eating saloon), that was a smith laboratory.
The building technique of the house is the one typical of the Campidano: the mural bases are built in stone, in Pula usually it came from the huge open air quarry that was the ruins of the ancient city of Nora, and the wall elevations were made with brick made of uncooked clay mixed with straw and dried at the sun, one of the oldest and more spread techniques of the Mediterranean sea.
In 1924 the house was enlarged to allow to the father of the actual owner, Mr Luigi Zucca, whose initials are carved on the main portal, to get married, marriage celebrated in 1925. The house acquires than more or less the actual shape. The large ambient of the smith laboratory was divided in three room hiding the marvellous truss ceiling.
At the middle of the ‘90s, the actual owner Remigio Zucca decided that the house had to become a typical restaurant, than in year 2000 start the conservative restoration works and the ones of adjustment of the old structures to their new function. All the rooms and the constitutive elements have been kept, but there have been some improvements too. First of all the former smith laboratory has been reunified into one saloon rediscovering the truss ceiling, the reception room has been enriched with colourful frescoes, and the courtyard has been enlarged to make space to the tables at the shadow of the orange and lemon trees.
