Six days in Sardinia: an island with its own language and a Bronze Age nobody taught you
Three nights in Cagliari under a Pisan citadel, a drive the length of the island, and two nights in a walled town where the local language is Catalan.
- Length
- 6 days, 5 nights
- Where you stay
- Cagliari, Alghero
- Places
- 13 across 6 days
Sardinia is sold as beaches, and the beaches deserve it. What almost nobody mentions is that the island had a Bronze Age civilisation of its own that built seven thousand stone towers, left no writing, made astonishing little bronze statuettes, and carved two-metre stone giants a thousand years before Rome existed. Most visitors fly in, drive to a resort and never hear about any of it.
Six days is enough for the two ends of the island and the archaeology in between. Cagliari in the south is a working capital on five limestone hills with a citadel on top, a flamingo lagoon behind it and a city beach at the end of a bus route. Alghero in the north west is a small walled port that was colonised by Catalans in the fourteenth century and still speaks their language.
Between them is the drive, and it is worth doing in daylight: half a day through empty interior, past cork oaks, sheep and, at one point, the best preserved of those Bronze Age towers.
Highlights
- Bronze figures a few centimetres tall, made three thousand years ago by people with no writing
- A Pisan watchtower with only three walls, so you climb it looking down into the street
- A Catalan-speaking old town with ramparts to walk at sunset and bars built into them
- Cliffs at Capo Caccia with six hundred and fifty steps cut down to a sea cave
Where to stay
Cagliari, three nights
The capital, stacked up a white limestone ridge with a walled Pisan citadel on top, the old districts spilling down the slope, the port at the bottom, and a salt lagoon behind where several thousand flamingos breed.
It was Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Pisan and then Spanish for four hundred years, which is why the old town has a Catalan feel and the language older people speak here is not Italian. It is a real city rather than a resort, which keeps it cheap and open in winter.
Alghero, two nights
About 164 km from Cagliari.
A small walled port on the north west coast that the Aragonese emptied of Sardinians in 1354 and repopulated with Catalans. Six hundred and fifty years later the local language is still a form of Catalan, the street signs are bilingual, and the Catalan government part-funds its schools.
The old town is a knot of cobbled lanes inside sea walls you can walk the length of, with a coral industry, a good market and, twenty minutes up the coast, a limestone headland with a cave at the bottom of it.
Day by day
Day 1 in Cagliari
Into Cagliari, and the terrace over the port
The way into the old town is a monumental white staircase built at the end of the nineteenth century, climbing from the square below to a covered gallery and out onto a terrace on the roof of the old bastion. It is where the city meets, it looks over the port and the lagoons, and it costs nothing.
Behind it, the walled quarter is a grid of narrow streets still lived in, with washing across the lanes and Pisan and Spanish doorways. The cathedral at the far end is thirteenth century Pisan behind a front that was rebuilt in the 1930s, with a crypt hacked out of the bedrock below it.
Eat down the hill. The upper town has the views and the old fishermen's quarter by the port has the food.
- 16:00
Bastione di Saint Remy
OtherClimb the staircase rather than taking the lift the first time. The terrace on top is where the city goes at seven in the evening, and there is usually a market or a concert going on under the arches.
- 17:30
Cattedrale di Santa Maria di Castello
ReligiousEverything inside is older and darker than the front suggests: two carved stone pulpits made for Pisa cathedral and given away, and a crypt of several hundred niches cut into the rock.
- 20:00
Dinner by the port
EatFregola with clams or spaghetti with bottarga, in the lanes behind the harbour. A family trattoria here does a full set lunch for about fifteen euros and dinner for not much more.
With more time: Two free public lifts run up the escarpment from the streets below, one beside the staircase and one on the western side. Locals use them constantly and visitors almost never find them.
Day 2 in Cagliari
Towers, bronzes and stone giants
The Pisans fortified this hill in the early fourteenth century and two of their watchtowers survive. They are odd buildings: three sides of white limestone and the fourth left open, so the wooden floors and staircases are exposed to the street below and climbing one means going up a series of galleries with a drop on one side.
Then the archaeological museum, which is the reason to take this island seriously. The nuraghic culture built stone towers all over Sardinia from about 1800 BC, left no written record at all, and cast small bronze figures of archers, wrestlers, chiefs and boats with a confidence that is startling at that scale.
In the same building are several of the stone giants found at Mont'e Prama in the 1970s: figures two metres tall with concentric circles for eyes, older than anything comparable in the western Mediterranean and not properly displayed anywhere until this century.
- 09:30
Torre dell'Elefante
HistoricBuilt in 1307, with the original portcullis still hanging at the base and a carved elephant on the corner that nobody can explain. The top gives you the port, the lagoons and the mountains behind.
- 11:00
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Cagliari
HistoricFour floors, chronological, with the bronzes on the first and the giants at the start. Two hours at least. There is nothing else like this collection anywhere, and it is almost always quiet.
- 13:30
Lunch below the citadel
EatThe streets under the museum have student places and bakeries doing filled carasau and panadas, small pies of meat or eel. Cheap, and enough before an afternoon on foot.
- 15:00
Anfiteatro Romano
HistoricA Roman amphitheatre from the second century that was not built up but cut down, carved out of the living rock of the slope, with the seating, the animal pens and the drainage channels all hacked into the stone.
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With more time: The second Pisan tower at the top of the hill is on the same ticket and is the taller of the two, and the botanical garden next to the amphitheatre is a shady hectare built over Roman cisterns, which is the best hour in Cagliari on a hot afternoon.
Day 3 in Cagliari
The lagoon, the beach and an early church
Start with the oldest building in the city: a squat domed church founded in the fifth century over the grave of a martyr, standing in a scrap of park with Roman sarcophagi lying around it. It has been shaken by earthquakes and bombed and rebuilt each time, which is why it looks like several buildings pushed together.
Then take the bus east. The road runs along a causeway between two lagoons where flamingos feed in shallow pink water a few hundred metres from the airport approach, and comes out at the far end on eight kilometres of pale sand with kiosks along it.
Spend the afternoon there. Tomorrow is a long drive and this is the last easy day.
- 09:30
Basilica di San Saturnino
ReligiousFifth century in origin and one of the oldest churches on the island, with a dome added by monks from Marseille. Opening hours are limited, so check before walking over.
- 10:45
Giardini pubblici
LeisureThe city's first public park, laid out in the nineteenth century with hundred-year-old planting and a municipal art gallery in the middle of it, on the way out of town.
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- 12:00
The beach, and lunch on the sand
EatTwenty minutes on the bus. The kiosks along the front do grilled fish and cold Vermentino, and the water shelves gently enough to walk out a long way.
With more time: The salt pans behind the beach are a regional park with a cycle path and hides, and the flamingos are there year round with the biggest numbers in spring. Bicycles can be hired at the park entrance and the loop takes a couple of hours.
Day 4 in Alghero
The length of the island, and into Alghero
Three and a half hours north up the main road through the middle of Sardinia: cork oak, sheep, low granite hills and villages that look emptied out, because they largely are. It is not a beautiful drive in the way the coast is, and it is the only way to understand how big and how empty the island's interior actually is.
The stop to make is at Barumini, about an hour north of Cagliari, where the best preserved of the nuraghic towers stands with a whole village of round stone huts around it. It is a central tower of dry stone with four more built around it and a settlement outside, put up around 1500 BC and buried under a hill until the 1950s. After yesterday's museum it will make complete sense.
Arrive in Alghero in the late afternoon, park outside the walls, and walk in for the evening.
- 08:30
Drive north, with a stop at Barumini
TravelAbout three hours thirty on the road, plus an hour and a half at the nuraghe. Guided visits only at the site and they leave every half hour; take a hat, because there is no shade at all.
- 17:00
Torre di San Giovanni
VisitThe sixteenth century tower on the seaward wall, now the tourist office and a small museum, and the obvious place to start a lap of the ramparts.
- 20:30
Dinner in the old town
EatLobster split and dressed the Catalan way if the budget allows, or grilled fish and a Vermentino if not. The lanes inside the walls are full of places and the ones off the main run are better.
With more time: If the drive sounds long, the coast road north up the eastern side is far more beautiful and takes at least two hours more, which turns the transfer into a full day. It is a good trade if you leave at eight.
Day 5 in Alghero
The old town, the cliffs and the cave
Alghero's old town is small and best done in the morning: a cathedral with a Catalan-Gothic bell tower, a church with a coloured tiled dome that is the symbol of the town, and lanes of yellow stone with Spanish coats of arms over the doorways. Look at the shop windows too, because red coral taken from the water here has supported a jewellery trade for centuries.
In the afternoon drive twenty minutes out to the headland at Capo Caccia, a wall of white limestone dropping straight into the sea, with a lighthouse on top and a staircase of six hundred and fifty-odd steps cut down the cliff face to a sea cave at the bottom.
The cave is enormous, full of stalactites and a saltwater lake, and you can also reach it by boat from Alghero harbour, which is easier on the legs and dependent on the sea being calm.
- 09:30
Cattedrale di Santa Maria
ReligiousThe cathedral, with a neoclassical front stuck on the sixteenth century body and a Catalan-Gothic bell tower behind that is the better part. The tower is climbable in summer.
- 11:00
Chiesa San Michele
VisitThe church with the polychrome tiled dome that appears on every photograph of the town. Sixteenth century, baroque inside, and free.
- 12:15
Museo del Corallo
CultureA small museum in a liberty-style villa about the red coral fished off this coast, which is why half the shops in the old town sell jewellery. Forty minutes, and it makes the shop windows legible.
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- 14:00
Capo Caccia and the sea cave
NoteTwenty minutes by car to the headland, then the staircase down and back up, or a boat from the harbour if the sea is flat. Allow three hours either way and take water for the climb.
With more time: The lap of the sea walls at sunset is the thing everybody in Alghero does, from the tower at one end round to the port at the other, with bars built into the ramparts along the way. It takes twenty minutes and about two hours if you stop.
Day 6 in Alghero
The market, the walls, and out
A short last morning, because the airport is ten minutes away. The covered market is the place to spend it: bottarga, sheep cheese, carasau bread and myrtle liqueur, all of which travel home well and none of which you will find in the same quality on the mainland.
Walk the ramparts once more on the way back to the car. The walls face west, so the light is behind you in the morning and the water off the rocks below is very clear.
Then the airport, which is small enough that ninety minutes is plenty.
- 09:30
Chiesa di San Francesco
ReligiousA fifteenth century Catalan-Gothic church a few streets inside the walls, with a cloister behind it used for concerts in summer. Ten minutes, and it is the best surviving piece of Aragonese Alghero.
- 10:45
Forte della Maddalena
VisitThe sixteenth century fort at the southern corner of the walls, now a bar and an exhibition space, and the end point of the walk along the ramparts.
- 12:00
Market shopping, then the airport
EatBottarga, pecorino and a packet of carasau. Then ten minutes to the terminal, and drop the car with a full tank.
With more time: With a later flight, the Roman town at Porto Torres or the nuraghic village at Palmavera, both within half an hour, are the obvious fillers. Palmavera in particular is a small version of what you saw at Barumini and takes forty minutes.
Before you go
Getting there and the car
Fly into Cagliari and out of Alghero, both of which have direct flights from a surprising number of European cities, and take a one-way hire car between them. Both airports are within ten minutes of their towns, and Cagliari's is connected by a five minute train.
Sardinia has almost no useful public transport once you leave the coastal railway, so the car is not optional if you want to see anything inland. The roads are good, empty and slow: the main north-south road is single carriageway for long stretches and everybody overtakes on it, so add time rather than pressing on.
The season
May, June, September and October. The sea is warm from June into October, August is when the whole of Italy arrives and prices double, and winter is mild but with much of the coast closed and the boat trips suspended.
The islanders take their own holiday in August too, which means some of the best restaurants in Cagliari shut for two or three weeks in the middle of it.
What to book
Almost nothing. The museums are cheap and never full, and a combined ticket in Cagliari covers the towers and several civic collections.
The exception is the boat to the sea cave at Capo Caccia, which runs only in calm weather and fills up in season, and the suckling pig at a proper restaurant, which usually has to be ordered a day ahead because it takes hours over a fire.
Eating
Sardinian food is not Italian food. Culurgiones, pasta parcels pleated along the top like a wheat ear and filled with potato, mint and cheese. Malloreddus, small ridged gnocchi with sausage and saffron. Fregola, toasted pasta pellets cooked with clams. Bottarga, cured mullet roe grated over spaghetti. Carasau, a paper-thin flatbread that keeps for months because shepherds needed it to.
Alghero adds a Catalan layer: lobster split and dressed with tomato and onion, paella, and a good deal more Spanish in the vocabulary than anywhere else in Italy. Drink Vermentino when it is hot and Cannonau when it is not, and both are cheap here.
The thing that surprises people about Sardinia is how little of it is about Italy. The language, the bread, the cheese, the towers, the way villages sit in the hills with their backs to the sea because pirates used to come from it: none of that reads as Italian.
Do the museum before the tower and the tower before the beach, and the whole island makes a different kind of sense.
Go deeper on one city
Each of these covers a single stop on this route in its own right.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is six days enough for Sardinia?
- For these two ends of it, yes. What it does not cover is the Costa Smeralda in the north east, the Gennargentu mountains in the middle or the wild east coast, each of which is a trip on its own. Sardinia is bigger than most people expect: it is about two hundred and seventy kilometres end to end.
- Is this a beach holiday?
- Only partly, and deliberately. There is a beach afternoon in Cagliari and a coast day at Alghero, and the rest is towns and archaeology. If beaches are the whole point, base yourself in one place on the coast for a week instead and use this itinerary's museums as a rainy day.
- Do I have to drive between the two?
- There is a train from Cagliari to Sassari and a bus on to Alghero, which takes about five hours in total and is bearable. But you would miss Barumini, which is the whole reason to cross the interior, and you would be stuck without a car at the Alghero end for Capo Caccia.
- What is nuraghic, exactly?
- A Bronze Age culture unique to Sardinia, running roughly from 1800 to 500 BC, which built around seven thousand dry-stone towers across the island, left no writing anybody has deciphered, and produced remarkable small bronzes and, late on, large stone statues. The museum in Cagliari and the site at Barumini together are the best introduction there is.
- Do people really speak Catalan in Alghero?
- A minority do, and it is officially recognised: signs are bilingual, it is taught in schools with support from Catalonia, and older people in the old town still use it. It is a distinct variety after six centuries of separation, and Catalans visiting find it archaic and comprehensible.