The earliest traces of human settlements in the Nuoro area, the so-called Domus de Janas, date back to the 3rd millennium BC. Fragments of Ozieri culture ceramics have been dated to c. 3500 BC. The province of Nuoro was a center of the Nuraghe civilization from 1500 BC, including more than 30 nuraghe sites, such has that at Tanca Manna with about 800 huts. The area, lying on the road from Karalis (Cagliari) to Ulbia (Olbia) was also colonized by the Romans.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Sardinia was held by the Vandals and then by the Byzantines. According to the letters of Pope Gregory I, in the island co-existed a Romanized and Christianized area (that of the provinciales) with, in the interior, Pagan cultures (Gens Barbaricina). As the Byzantine control waned, the Guidicati appeared. A small village known as Nugor appears on a medieval map from 1147. In the two following centuries it grew to more than 1000 inhabitants. Nuoro remained a town of average importance under the Aragonese and Spanish domination of Sardinia, until famine and plague struck it in the late 17th century. After the annexion to the Piedmont in the Kingdom of Sardinia, the town became the administrative center of the area, obtaining the title of city in 1836; in the 19th century it was one of the main cultural centers of Sardinia.
