The best walks and hikes around Orane/Orani

The church is locked and can only be viewed from the outside

Séuna is the first Nuoro, the farmers' neighborhood. Satta depicts it as a "cluster of small, single-story houses," dirt courtyards enclosed by dry-stone walls, and "cassi" (small boxes) at the doorstep: an order born from disorder. In the center, the little Church of the Grazie: simple, rustic, almost a house like any other, surmounted by a pediment with a bell. Here, Satta places a crucial part of his popular chorus: the peasant-priest, the vegetable garden, the almsgiving, the minimal rites of a very poor but cohesive community. Séuna, he says, could be a seaside village "if there were a sea": instead, there is a merciless white light that splits the shadows of the courtyards and accompanies the funerals that, as they pass, force the "lords of Tettamanzi" to rise and uncover their heads. Strolling today through the narrow streets that climb toward the Corso means recognizing the material grammar of the novel: courtyards, gates, irregular paving stones. Stop in front of the church facade and look at the low houses: you'll understand why Satta, in his "balance sheets," makes Séuna the origin of the village and at the same time its limit—proud, industrious, poor. It's the necessary counterpoint to the city of courts, classrooms, and cafés.

The house on the corner of Via Angioy and Via Sebastiano Satta is the author's biographical and fictional fulcrum. Now owned by the diocese, it houses a residential community: a purpose consistent with the charitable legacy left to the Satta-Galfré family. In the novel, the building becomes the setting for a domestic sociology: the notary's upper-floor study, the ground-floor living room, the constant ascents and descents of stairs too solemn for a provincial home. Ahead, the dark palace of engineer Mannu: Satta makes it the reverse shot of his own home, describing a "capital" project descended upon a village that had "made itself" over the centuries. Don't miss the rear courtyards: Satta evokes them as a "series of courtyards" that end in a small vegetable garden, with an oleander hated by Donna Vincenza—minimal details that become domestic symbols (poison, obstinacy, time). The street door ("portoncino") is contrasted by the large portal facing the countryside, a metaphor for the two faces of the house and its inhabitants: one public, controlled; the other open to the wind and the crops. Passing by today, one understands how Satta's architecture is above all an architecture of memory.

In good weather you have a wonderful panoramic view from the lookout rock.

Punta Palai is 1,195 meters high. You can still climb the rock and enjoy the view in good weather. It's a wonderfully quiet and peaceful place.

A hike to Punta Palai is highly worthwhile. In good weather, the views are spectacular.

Great view

History According to legend, the Sanctuary was born thanks to an archaic wooden statue found by a shepherd in the 17th century, who miraculously healed the city from the plague. The ancient sacred building was built in 1670, thanks to the project by Nicola Ruiu Manca, then replaced by a church in 1946. Since 1957, the icon of the Madonna delle Grazie has been kept in the new Sanctuary, next to the church. The Sanctuary The new Sanctuary was designed in the 1950s by the architect Don Verri and is characterized by a high facade, in polished granite, decorated with mosaics representing the fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary. Of the ancient Sanctuary we can only notice the facade, consisting of an ornate portal and a trachyte rose window, derived from the older church of Nuoro. The Sanctuary, as a whole, is formed by a very simple architectural scheme: an elongated room, covered by a barrel vault, which ends in a square presbytery. Inside we can admire two superimposed altars where, in the upper altar, the Virgin of Grace is kept. The small wooden sculpture represents a young woman holding the Child to her breast with her left hand and who, in turn, holds the world in the palm of her hand. To appreciate the cycle of seventeenth-century frescoes that outline the figures of the twelve Apostles with other Saints. Noteworthy is the imposing bell tower, which was also part of the previous Sanctuary. Source: https://www.vaticano.com/turismo/scheda_19_santuario-di-nostra-signora-delle-grazie.html