Location and Greek origin
The city of Olbia is located in one of the most protected inlets of the entire Sardinian coast and looks out onto the central Tyrrhenian sea; its originates as a Greek settlement perhaps as early as the second half of the VII century B.C. It was followed after three centuries by a Carthaginian colony that, as did the entire Island, fell under Roman domination in 238 B.C.
The City's Role
Although the city's politicians changed, its role as an eminent harbour and therefore gatherer of northern Sardinia's goods for overseas export (grains, granite, animals for breeding and from fishing, salt etc.) and as receiver and re-distributor to the hinterlands of imported goods (wine, oil, fish sauces, pottery etc.), initially and for the most part Italic (II century B.C. to I century A.D.), and then Gallic, Iberian (I to II centuries A.D.) and African (II-V centuries A.D.), did not change.
The importance of this landing place is underlined by numerous facts including being one of the three vital Sardinian transportation routes (in fact this area is where one of the largest collections of Sardinian milestones has been discovered) and where Cicero’s brother Quintus, resided for some time in order to look after the grain refurbishment to Pompey's army. Here Atte, one of Nero’s favoured citizens, had a large estate in the fertile plateau behind the city which saw rise, as early as the II century B.C., numerous farms most likely for the production of wine.
Places of Worship and important Roman Buildings
Amidst well-known places of worship, we find the urban sanctuary dedicated to Hercules and another in the Necropolis. There is also evidence of important buildings, public or private, like the complex under the scholastic building in Corso Umberto which uncovered frescos, the heads of statues and the baths; in order to supply it with water, one of the best kept aqueducts in Sardinia was built between the I and II centuries A.D.
Vandalic Invasions
As with other Sardinian settlements, the definite decline of the Roman city, which in late Middle Ages actually changed its name to Fausania, took place in the period of the Vandalic Invasions. The urban area, reduced to a small inhabited nucleus, regained an area equal to that of the Roman settlement only between the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries, then surpassing it in a short period and concluding with its incredible present-day expansion.
