Palau – Capo d’Orso

The Bear Rock, or as it is geographically called Capo d’Orso, is one of the best known icons of Sardinia and is located of the territory of Palau. It has been shaped into such likenesses by the winds, which, over millions and millions of years, have removed all the brittle parts from the granite rock, leaving a structure that, when viewed from a certain angle, looks remarkably like the outline of a plantigrade. The rock was well known since ancient times and was a base point for all sailors who ventured into the seas off the Gallura coast and the Strait of Bonifacio. Ptolemy, considered one of the fathers of geography gave its geographic coordinates and reported the name by which it was then known: ‘Promontorium Arcti,’ or ‘Bear Promontory,’ from which, by the way, there is an extraordinary view of the La Maddalena Archipelago Park. According to the writer Victor Berard (Scholar of Omero) Capo d’Orso is the only location in the Mediterranean that can be identified with the land of the Lestrigonians, that land, that is, where Homer places the landing of the navigator Odysseus in search of food and water for the crew and where the Greek leader himself suffered a severe defeat. The episode is described in Book X of the Odyssey, and relates that Odysseus disembarked to supply his three ships at a spring called ‘Artacia’ (i.e., ‘of the Bear’) and as he drew water he saw a wisp of smoke rising in the distance among the mountains, an omen of the presence of indigenous peoples. As he approached that place, he encountered a maiden of considerable stature to whom he tried to speak to communicate, but the latter, frightened, took to shouting to get the men’s attention. These people, of gigantic stature, were led by Antiphates, king of the Lestrygonians. They were a people of anthropophagi (cannibals) and they made feast of Odysseus’s men whom they managed to capture and with their great physical strength destroyed as many as two of the ships by throwing boulders on them, so Odysseus himself was forced to retreat hastily with the only boat left to him.