J. E. Crawford Flitch

Crawford Flitch was born to a wealthy family in 1881, in a Yorkshire town. Passionate about historical studies and art, he graduated from Cambridge in humanities in 1907, but already in 1903 he enrolled in the London Bar Association, an activity that he practiced very little, especially for his very frequent trips. In fact, from a young age, attracted by the sunshine and exotic charm of the countries of Mediterranean Europe, he abandoned the gray and cold England to explore them thoroughly (especially Spain) fascinated by the study of different and ancient cultures. The outbreak of the Great War, in which he takes an active part as Artillery Captain, will mark a setback but not the end of these explorations, which also take him to Sardinia, at the end of a tour - typical of 19th century travelers - to the Mediterranean islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Sardinia). His pages on Sardinia are part of those dedicated to the entire journey, and precisely encompass four chapters of the work entitled “Mediterranean Moods”: Cagliari, The Silver Gate (excursion to Gennargentu), The Feast of Saint Constantine (the story of Ardia) and The Buried City (excursion to Tharros). He arrived in Cagliari probably in 1910 and came there from the sea: the city therefore appears to him as a “rock climbing” in whose highest part is his heart, Castello, where the streets “smelly, narrow and dark even in the light of an August afternoon”, winding and teeming, “appear dug like gorges through massive blocks of buildings”. From the capital it moves to Barbagia: “It is not easy to say precisely in which period of history you are in Barbagia - when at a turn of the road you run into a group of men on horseback, in scarlet shirts, with white flared sleeves, it seems that you are plunging into the era of the sixteenth or seventeenth century”; you are ecstatic by the vegetation and colors of dawn, by the charm of uncontaminated nature. He moves to the plain of Oristano, where the state of abandonment of water creates a lethal outbreak of malaria. He then plunges into the “restless crowd”, heated with mystical fervor, to experience the Ardia, Sedilo's wild horse race, an ancient and magical rite. Finally, visit the ruins of Tharros, where he unravels his imagination to reconstruct the life of the past millennia, among the docks crowded with people and the narrow and noisy streets, crossed by struggling oxen and women with amphorae on their heads, in the background of the forum and the Roman amphitheater.

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25/6/2026 - 13:13