In the mid-14th century, during a plague epidemic that hit the historic territory of Meilogu, a family from Thiesi went to live outside the village to avoid contamination. According to a folk tale, the youngest member of the family, Antine – short for Constantine in Logudoro dialect -, was wandering through the fields when he discovered a cave with marvellous painted decorations. He described it to his parents as a ‘palace’ and began to visit it more and more frequently. Orphaned, he moved there, living in the company of the Janas, mythical fairies who lived in the ravines dug out of the rock. He was eventually found lifeless here, with his eyes wide open, intent on admiring the paintings until his very last moment. So far, all this is legend, while the extraordinary decorations adorning the walls of one of the four tombs in the necropolis of Mandra Antine, known as ‘Antine’s hideaway’, are absolutely real. At the same time, the paintings are an enigma and a very rare phenomenon: only a few cases of multicoloured decorations have been found inside a prehistoric tomb in the whole of the Mediterranean basin.

The complex is located ten kilometres from Thiesi, on a trachyte ridge at the foot of Mount Ittiresu, in the locality of s’Ozastredu, set in a landscape of woods and streams. The necropolis dates back to a period between the Final Neolithic age and the Eneolithic age (late 4th - early 3rd millennium BC) and includes four hypogea almost ‘aligned’ along a slight slope on the rock face. The ‘legendary’ Domu de Janas which brought fame to the necropolis is Tomb III, known not by chance as the ‘painted tomb’: its T-shaped layout features an elliptical anteroom that leads into a rectangular chamber, in which two oval rooms open up on its sides. On the back wall of the room, you will see the portrayal of a door, with a red painted frame around it. A band of the same colour as the frame runs along the base of the ‘false door’, while on the upper side of the frame you can see six black triangles, positioned in rows of three with opposing vertices. There are other red bands on the sides and above the door: in this case their ends are curved, representing the horns of a bull. There are hanging black discs or spheres branching out from each ‘horn’: these are the most enigmatic symbols in the tomb. Red and black bands run along the top, while the wall has a yellow background colour. The ceiling also shows traces of painting, in particular two sloping roofs imitating a hut and twenty squares containing different white shapes: circles, semicircles and spirals.

Outside the tomb, you will see the remains of a pool carved out of the rock and another series of mysterious symbols, concentric rectangular figures, engraved on a rock on the side. In tomb I you will see a plinth and two pilasters with raised engravings and the access doors to the crypts where the entombments took place. Tomb II suffered numerous collapses, in particular of the ceilings, while the fourth hypogeum is the smallest, with an inverted 'L' layout, in which you will notice the frame of the door engraved with precision on the rock, to guarantee the more solid closure of the funeral slab.