Nuraghe, or NURHAG, the name of round towers, in shape truncated cones, of which 3000 are scattered about the island of Sardinia. They vary from 20 to 60 feet in diameter, rise 30 or 40 feet above the ground, with two or three stories of domed chambers connected by a spiral staircase, and are made of granite, limestone, basalt, porphyry, sandstone, and schist, built in regular courses of roughly-hewn stone, without cement. Some of the stones in the lower courses weigh 12 tons each. Believed to be of Phœnician origin, they closely resemble the Brochs (q.v.) of Scotland. Nurhage is regarded by some as an aboriginal word meaning 'fire-circle' or 'hearth'; by some as derived from Nura, an old name of Minorca, where such towers (called talyots) are common.
See Canon Spano's Nuraghi di Sardegna (1867); James Fergusson's History of Rude Stone Monuments (1872); and Lieut.-col. Sir R. Lambert-Playfair's Handbook to the Mediterranean (1890).