Arborea is a town and ''

comune A (; : , ) is an administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions () and provinces (). The can also have the City status in Italy, titl ...

'' in the

province of Oristano The province of Oristano (; ) is a Provinces of Italy, province in the autonomous island region of Sardinia, Italy. Its capital is the city of Oristano. There are 87 ''comuni'' (: ''comune'') in the province. It has an area of , a total populati ...

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia an ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, whose economy is largely based on agriculture and cattle breeding with production of vegetables, rice, fruit and milk (notably the local milk product Arborea).

History

Arborea was built by the fascist government of Italy in the 1920s, after the draining of the marshes which covered the area. The village was populated by families, mostly composed of

peasants A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising f ...

, who came from the regions of

Veneto Veneto, officially the Region of Veneto, is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northeast Italy, north-east of the country. It is the fourth most populous region in Italy, with a population of 4,851,851 as of 2025. Venice is t ...

and

Friuli Friuli (; ; or ; ; ) is a historical region of northeast Italy. The region is marked by its separate regional and ethnic identity predominantly tied to the Friulians, who speak the Friulian language. It comprises the major part of the autono ...

in north-eastern Italy.

Name

Arborea is named after, and lies within, the medieval Giudicato of Arborea, which had its capital, at various periods, in nearby Tharros and Oristano. The town was originally named ''Villaggio Mussolini'' (with which it was inaugurated on 29 October 1928) by the fascist government in honor of the Italian fascist dictator

Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who, upon assuming office as Prime Minister of Italy, Prime Minister, became the dictator of Fascist Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 un ...

. Less than two years later, the name was revised to ''Mussolinia di Sardegna'' ("''Mussolinia of Sardinia''", to distinguish the town from ''Mussolinia di Sicilia'', now Santo Pietro in the commune of Caltagirone,

Province of Catania The province of Catania (; ) was a province in the autonomous island region of Sicily, Italy. Its capital was the city of Catania. It had an area of and a total population of about 1,116,917 as of 31 December 2014. Historically known also as ...

).voce "Arborea" ''da'' F.C. Casula, ''Dizionario Storico Sardo'', Carlo Delfino Editore, 2001, Sassari The current name was adopted after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Twin towns

Mortegliano Mortegliano () is a (municipality) in the Province of Udine, Regional decentralization entity of Udine in the Italy, Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, located about 60 km northwest of Trieste and about 14 km southwest of Udine. ...

* Sermoneta,

* Zevio,

* Villorba,

References

External links

History of Arborea and Mussolinia
Italian fascist architecture Populated places established in 1928 Planned communities in Italy 1930 establishments in Italy {{Sardinia-geo-stub