San Salvatore di Sinis

This tiny village in western Sardina, which is 18km away from the larger town of Oristano, is uninhabited except for a few days a year in September, during the novenas, 9 days of prayers and celebrations dedicated to the saint that gives the town its name. 

During the days of the festival, participants reside in the town's sas cumbessias - simple and spare residences built to house pilgrims, and which sit empty the rest of the year. One of the key events of the celebration is the Corsa degli Scalzi (barefoot run), in which over 800 local men run barefoot along the (very rocky) paths between Cabras and San Salvatore carrying the statue of the Holy Saviour, the patron of the church. On Sardinia Day (April 28), the town also hosts a festival in which locals dress up either in various animal based costumes or traditional dress.

The 17th century church of San Salvatore is the main physical attraction in town, particularly its underground hypogeum, or crypt. This was originally a pagan chapel from the Nuragic (bronze age) period thought to be linked to the cult of water. During the late Roman era it was converted into a Christian church, and there is still some evidence of its previous Roman life in the form of frescoes and mosaics. On the walls of the crypt it is possible to identify writing in Punic, Greek, Latin, and Arabic - evidence of the island of Sardinia's long and fascinating history.

A significant subset of tourists, however, visit San Salvatore because of its association with the "spaghetti western" genre of films of the 1960s. Although the rumor that part of "A Fistful of Dollars" was shot there is probably untrue (but, for obvious reasons, not actively disavowed) the similarity between this village and those in the Southwestern United States has resulted in a number of such movies being filmed here. Of these the most significant is "Garter Colt", starring Nicoletta Machiavelli, which is almost unique amongst the Italo-western genre in having a woman in the leading role.