of an uncontaminated and timeless island. Recounted by the many travelers who visited Sardinia in that period, like D. H. Lawrence, such myths were celebrated mainly by Sardinian artists such as Giuseppe Biasi, Francesco Ciusa, Filippo Figari, Mario Delitala and Stanis Dessy. In their works they highlighted the autochthonous values of the agro-pastoral world, not yet homologated to the modernity that was pressing from the outside. Other important Sardinian artists of the second half of the twentieth century were Costantino Nivola, Maria Lai, Albino Manca and Pinuccio Sciola. World Heritage Sites Megalithic building structures called nuraghes are scattered in great numbers throughout Sardinia. Su Nuraxi di Barumini is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997. Languages Italian, which is the official language throughout Italy, is the most widely spoken language today, followed by the island's indigenous language, Sardinian (sardu). Sardinian is a distinct branch of the Romance language family, going either by the same name or by Southern Romance: it is therefore a separate language rather than an Italian dialect, and it is also closer to its Latin roots than Italian itself. Sardinian has been formally recognized as one of Italy's twelve historical ethnolinguistic minorities since 1997, by regional and Italian law. The language has been influenced by Catalan, Spanish and recently Italian, while the once spoken Nuragic contributes many features to it in many ancient remnants. In 2006 the regional administration has approved the use of a single standardised writing system, the so-called Limba Sarda Comuna, in official acts. As a literary language, Sardinian is gaining importance, despite heated debate about the lack of a commonly acknowledged standard orthography and controversial proposed solutions to this problem. The two main orthographies of the language are in fact Campidanese (sardu campidanesu), used in central southern Sardinia, and Logudorese (sardu logudoresu), extending northwards almost to the suburbs of Sassari. The Sardinian language is quite different from the other Romance languages and is homogeneous in terms of morphology, syntax and lexicon, but it also shows a spectrum of variation in terms of phonetics between the Northern and the Southern dialects. Sassarese (sassaresu) and Gallurese (gadduresu) are classified as Corso-Sardinian languages, therefore belonging to the Italo-Dalmatian branch rather than to the Sardinian one, and are spoken in the north. In Sardinia there are a few language islands: Algherese (alguerés) is a dialect of Catalan spoken in the city of Alghero; on the islands of