Orani, Wash basin

The old municipal washhouse is located in the upper part of the town, on the side of the Su Cantaru hill. Today it houses the museum dedicated to the sculptor Costantino Nivola, opened in 1995, thanks to the restoration work of the architects Peter Chermayeff and Umberto Floris.
Inside, the paved courtyard is crossed by a small channel that starts from an ancient fountain, touching the materials typical of the sculptor's work and then earth, stone, lime, concrete.
The building is a simple construction with arched openings that are repeated on the four sides of the rectangular plan, made of typical local stone. The clear and bright interior is covered with exposed wooden trusses and has a single room, where instead of the ancient tanks, an anthology of the work of the Oranese sculptor, between 1960 and 1988, is exhibited.

History of studies
A review of studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the fact sheet in the volume of the “History of Art in Sardinia” on nineteenth-century architecture (2001).

Bibliography by
F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy to the end of the 1900s. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheet 177.