Three days in Cagliari: the flamingos nest between the airport and the beach

Two nights under the walls of a Pisan citadel, with a Roman amphitheatre cut into the rock, bronze figures three thousand years old, and eight kilometres of sand on a bus route.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Cagliari
Places
7 across 3 days
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Cagliari is a stack. The old citadel sits on a white limestone ridge with its Pisan walls and two watchtowers still in place, the eighteenth and nineteenth century town spills down the slope below it, the port is at the bottom, and behind the whole thing is a shallow salt lagoon where several thousand greater flamingos breed. They nest within sight of the runway, and the road out to the beach runs between them.

It is a working island capital rather than a resort, which is why it stays reasonable in price and open in winter, and it is a much better introduction to Sardinia than the famous stretch of coast in the north east. The archaeological museum here holds the evidence of a culture that was building stone towers on this island while Mycenae was still standing, and nobody outside Sardinia knows much about it.

Two nights does the city. The beach and the lagoon are both a twenty-minute bus ride, which means a third day here is never wasted.

Highlights

  • A Pisan watchtower open on one side, so you climb it looking straight down into the street
  • Bronze figures a few centimetres high, made three thousand years ago by a culture with no writing
  • A Roman amphitheatre cut directly out of the hillside rock
  • Flamingos wading in a lagoon between the airport and an eight kilometre beach

Where to stay

Cagliari, two nights

Phoenician, then Carthaginian, then Roman, then Pisan, then Aragonese and Spanish for four hundred years, which is why the old town has a Catalan feel and the language spoken by older people here is not Italian at all.

The city was heavily bombed in 1943 and rebuilt in patches, so the fabric jumps between medieval walls, Spanish baroque and postwar concrete within a single street. The citadel on top came through it better than the districts below.

Day by day

Day 1 in Cagliari

Up to the citadel, and the terrace over the city

The old town is on top of a ridge and the way in is a monumental white staircase built at the end of the nineteenth century, which climbs from the square below to a covered gallery and out onto a terrace on the roof of the old bastion. It is the meeting place of the city, it looks over the whole port and the lagoons, and it costs nothing.

Behind it, Castello is a grid of narrow streets between the walls, still lived in, with washing across the lanes and Spanish and Pisan doorways. The cathedral is at the far end, thirteenth century Pisan behind a neo-Gothic front that was added in the 1930s, with a crypt cut into the rock below holding several hundred niches of relics.

Eat down the hill. Castello has views and Marina, the old fishermen's quarter by the port, has the food.

  1. 16:00

    Bastione di Saint Remy

    Other

    Climb 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 under the arches.

  2. 17:30

    Cattedrale di Santa Maria di Castello

    Religious

    The front is a 1930s reconstruction in Pisan style, and everything inside it is older and darker: two carved stone pulpits made for Pisa cathedral and given away, and a crypt hacked out of the bedrock.

  3. 20:00

    Dinner in the Marina quarter

    Eat

    Fregola with clams or spaghetti with bottarga, in the lanes behind the port. A small family trattoria here will do a full set lunch for about fifteen euros and dinner for not much more.

With more time: The two public lifts up the hill, one from the square by the staircase and one on the western side, are free and save a hundred steps each. Locals use them constantly and visitors almost never find them.

Day 2 in Cagliari

Towers, giants, and a Roman amphitheatre

The Pisans fortified this hill in the early fourteenth century and built two watchtowers that are still standing, and they are strange buildings: three sides of white limestone and the fourth left open, so the wooden floors and stairs are exposed to the street below. Climbing one means going up a series of galleries with nothing between you and a hundred-foot drop on one side.

Then the archaeological museum, which is the reason to take Sardinia seriously. The island had a Bronze Age culture that built thousands of stone towers, left no writing, and cast small bronze figures of archers, wrestlers, chiefs and boats with astonishing confidence. In the same building are several of the stone giants dug up at Mont'e Prama in the 1970s: two-metre figures with concentric circles for eyes, older than anything comparable in the western Mediterranean.

In the afternoon walk round the hill to the Roman amphitheatre, which was not built up but cut down, carved out of the living rock of the slope.

  1. 09:30

    Torre dell'Elefante

    Historic

    Built in 1307, with the original portcullis still in place at the base and an elephant carved on the corner that nobody can explain. The top gives you the port, the lagoons and the mountains behind.

  2. 11:00

    Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Cagliari

    Historic

    Four floors, chronological, with the nuraghic bronzes on the first and the stone giants at the start. Give it two hours; there is nothing else like this collection anywhere.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch below the citadel

    Eat

    The 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 walk.

  4. 15:00

    Anfiteatro Romano

    Historic

    Second century AD, carved out of the rock rather than constructed, with the seating tiers, the animal pens and the drainage channels cut directly into the stone. Ten minutes round the hill from the museum.

With more time: The second Pisan tower, at the top of the hill, is the taller of the two and open on the same ticket, and the botanical garden beside the amphitheatre is a shady hectare of Mediterranean and tropical planting built over Roman cisterns.

Day 3 in Cagliari

An early church, the lagoon, and the sand

The last morning starts 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 damaged by earthquakes and bombing 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 an eight kilometre beach of pale sand with kiosks along it.

The airport train from the central station takes five minutes, so an afternoon flight is comfortable even with the sand.

  1. 09:30

    Basilica di San Saturnino

    Religious

    Fifth century in origin and one of the oldest churches in Sardinia, with a Provencal-influenced dome added by Marseille monks. Open limited hours, and worth checking before you walk over.

  2. 10:45

    Giardini pubblici

    Leisure

    The city's first public park, laid out in the nineteenth century with a hundred-year-old planting and a municipal art gallery in the middle of it, on the way out of town.

  3. 12:00

    The beach, and lunch on the sand

    Eat

    Twenty 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 whole loop takes a couple of hours.

Before you go

Where to stay

Castello, the walled quarter on top, is the atmospheric choice: quiet, high, and reached by lifts and long staircases. Villanova and Marina, the old districts on the slope below, are livelier, closer to the restaurants and much easier with a suitcase.

Everything is walkable if you accept the gradient. Two free public lifts run up the escarpment, which the maps do not always show and which save a serious climb.

Getting around

The airport is seven kilometres out and connected by a train that takes five minutes into the central station, which is a rare piece of sensible planning. From the station everything in the old town is a walk or a short bus.

For the beach, the bus from the centre takes about twenty minutes and runs late in summer. A hire car is only worth it if you are leaving the city for the coast or the interior, and it is a liability in the old quarter, where most streets are stairs.

Timing and tickets

Nothing needs booking. The archaeological museum, the towers and the amphitheatre are all cheap, and a combined ticket covers the towers and several city museums.

Sardinia keeps a long lunch break and the towers close in the early afternoon. Summer here is hot and dry rather than humid, and the sensible shape of a day is sights in the morning, beach or shade in the middle, and the old town again in the evening.

Eating

Sardinian food is its own thing and barely Italian. Culurgiones, pasta parcels pleated along the top like a wheat ear, 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 and intensely salty. And carasau, a paper-thin flatbread that keeps for months because shepherds needed it to.

The set meal at a small trattoria near the port is one of the best-value lunches in Italy, and the wine to order is Vermentino if it is hot and Cannonau if it is not. Suckling pig cooked over myrtle wood is the celebration dish and needs to be ordered in advance in most places.

Cagliari does not try very hard, which is a compliment. There is a terrace where the whole city sits at seven, a museum full of a civilisation nobody taught you about, and a beach at the end of a bus route with flamingos on the way.

Stay in the old town, eat by the port, and take the bus east on the last morning.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

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Common questions

Is Cagliari worth a trip in itself?
For two or three days, yes, particularly outside summer when the rest of the island is closed. It has the archaeology, the citadel, good food at fair prices and a beach on a bus route. As a week on its own it would run thin; as the start or end of a Sardinian trip it is ideal.
When can I see the flamingos?
All year. They breed in the lagoon behind the beach and the numbers are highest in spring and early summer, when several thousand are present. Early morning and late afternoon are best, and you can see them from the bus without getting off.
Do I need a car for Sardinia?
For the island, yes, almost without exception: the interior and the best beaches have little public transport. For Cagliari itself, no, and parking in the old town is genuinely difficult. Pick the car up when you leave the city.
What is worth a day trip from here?
Nora, a Phoenician and Roman town on a headland forty-five minutes south, with mosaics and a theatre right on the sea. Villasimius and the south east coast for beaches. And Su Nuraxi at Barumini, an hour north, which is the best preserved of the Bronze Age stone towers and the thing the museum collection makes sense of.
When should I come?
April to June and September to October. The sea is warm from June to October, August is when all of Italy arrives, and winter here is mild and bright, with the city open and the coast empty.