The best coastal towns that eat well in Sardegna
Sardinia eats differently from the mainland, and the coast is where the difference is easiest to taste. Grey mullet roe is salted and pressed into bottarga beside the lagoons, tuna is still butchered and cured by families whose ancestors came from Genoa by way of Tunisia, and sea urchins go into pasta in the cold months when the water is clearest. The building stone changes as you go round the island, from the pale limestone and Catalan windows of the northwest to the volcanic dark of the southern islets, and the seafood changes with it. Late spring and early autumn are the good months, warm enough for the water, quiet enough that a kitchen has time to cook properly.
Most visitors head for the Costa Smeralda, and the stretch around Porto Cervo has the reputation, the yacht berths and the prices that follow both. It is genuinely beautiful granite coastline, and in August it is full. The restaurants that get booked out there are largely booked by people staying in the same handful of resorts, and the menus reflect that.
The same coastline continues in both directions, past the resorts and round the headlands, and it keeps its cooking. These are towns on the sea where a dining guide has picked out a table, places with working harbours and fish markets rather than marinas, spread from the Gallura granite in the north to the lagoons of the western gulfs. Fewer people eat here, and the seasons last longer.
Of the 41 communes we have mapped in Sardegna, 6 qualify as coastal towns that eat well: each sits directly on the sea, and a dining guide has named a table in each. The smallest, Palau, has 4,048 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The best hidden towns that eat well in Sardegna and The best beach towns in Sardegna.
Palau
Why visit Palau
Palau is young by Italian standards. The first houses went up in the first half of the 19th century, when shepherds from Tempio Pausania came down to the coast for summer pasture.
The dialect spoken is Gallurese, the same as inland Tempio, a trace of where the town's founders came from. The town's shape follows its coast: a working port at the center, the headland with its granite outcrop to the east, the fortress on the high ground behind, and the windsurfing peninsula out to the west.
None of these sit far from each other, so a settlement built for shepherds' summer pasture became, in the same stretch of shoreline, a naval lookout, a ferry gateway, and a wind sport venue without much distance between any of them.
Il Paguro, La Gritta have been named by a guide.
What to see in Palau
- Roccia dell'Orso. Recorded by Greek and Roman navigators as a landmark for the strait. The climb up to it gives a view over the port and across to La Maddalena.
- Fortezza di Monte Altura. Built 1887-1889 as part of the defensive belt protecting the naval base across the water. Open for guided visits, standing above the town rather than in it.
- Isola dei Gabbiani. A tied-island peninsula, meaning it connects to the mainland by a low sandy bar rather than open water. The shallows on the sheltered side make it navigable even for beginners.
How to get to Palau
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Sassari is roughly 115 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the working season: ferries every half hour, beaches at the right temperature, the mistral cooling the afternoons. July and August are the busy months when the campgrounds fill and the ferry queues stretch back to the roundabout. June and September are easier, same water, fewer people.
Santa Teresa Gallura
Why visit Santa Teresa Gallura
Santa Teresa Gallura sits on the northern tip of Sardinia, facing the Strait of Bonifacio. Corsica is 11 kilometers away across the water, the closest point between the two islands.
The town was founded on August 12, 1808 by King Vittorio Emanuele I of Savoy and named for his wife Maria Teresa of Austria-Este, built over the older settlement of Longonsardo and laid out on a regular grid borrowed from Turin. Before the Savoy refoundation, Philip II of Spain had already raised the Torre di Longonsardo on the headland in the 1570s, one of the coastal towers built to watch for North African raiders.
Capo Testa, the granite peninsula west of town, is a Hercynian outcrop weathered into round boulders and arches, with a lighthouse at its tip and the Cala di l'Ea wind-carved cove on its eastern shore. Rena Bianca, the town beach, has held the Bandiera Blu since 1987.
Millo Ristorante, Da Thomas have been named by a guide.
What to see in Santa Teresa Gallura
- Torre di Longonsardo. Late 16th-century Spanish coastal watchtower built under Philip II, the headland landmark above the town and a free viewpoint.
- Spiaggia Rena Bianca. Town beach of white sand and shallow turquoise water, Bandiera Blu holder since 1987, a short walk from the central piazza.
- Capo Testa. Granite peninsula west of town shaped by erosion into round boulders, arches and natural pools, with a working lighthouse at the western tip.
How to get to Santa Teresa Gallura
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Sassari is roughly 114 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the open season. May and June bring warm but not yet stifling water, with the maquis still flowering. July and August are the loud months when the campgrounds fill, ferry traffic peaks, and Rena Bianca packs out by ten in the morning.
Castelsardo
Why visit Castelsardo
Castelsardo sits at 114 meters on a rock above the Gulf of Asinara, twenty-five kilometers north of Sassari. The Doria family of Genoa built the castle in the early twelfth century to control the gulf, and it served as the residence of Brancaleone Doria and Eleonora d'Arborea until 1448, when the Aragonese took it and renamed it Castel Aragonese.
The Spanish turned it into a defensive fort with towers and bastions, and it kept that name until the Savoys took over in the eighteenth century and gave it the present name. The old town climbs the rock in a single line from the harbour to the castle at its summit, the walled village wrapped around the slope between the two.
Below the castle, the cathedral stands on its own terrace above the sea, its tiled bell tower placed so it can be picked out from boats well offshore. Six kilometers east, on the road out of town, the Roccia dell'Elefante sits apart from this vertical arrangement, a single eroded outcrop rather than part of the settlement.
Three rulers in succession, Genoese, Aragonese, Savoyard, each left their mark on the same rock without erasing what came before: the castle they fought over, the church they built beneath it, and the harbour they all needed at its foot.
Il Cormorano have been named by a guide.
What to see in Castelsardo
- Castello dei Doria. Tops the walled village at its highest point, the rock dropping to the harbour below. Its rooms now hold the museum devoted to the town's weaving craft.
- Cattedrale di Sant'Antonio Abate. Gothic core with seventeenth-century Renaissance and Baroque additions, tiled bell tower visible from sea, Maestro di Castelsardo altarpiece inside.
- Museo dell'Intreccio Mediterraneo. Recreated workshops and historical pieces set inside the castle's rooms, tracing how asphodel and dwarf palm are cut, stripped and worked into baskets and sieves.
How to get to Castelsardo
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Sassari is roughly 35 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the working season on the Gulf of Asinara. The Bandiera Blu beaches at Lu Bagnu and around Castelsardo open from May, and the castle terrace catches the gulf light best in early or late summer. July and August fill the centro storico with day-trippers from Sassari and the Costa Smeralda.
Carloforte
Why visit Carloforte
Carloforte is the only settlement on the Isola di San Pietro, seven kilometers off the south-western tip of Sardegna and reached by ferry from Portovesme or Calasetta. About 5,900 people live here.
The story is unusual on the island. Coral fishers from Pegli, near Genoa, left in 1541 for the Tunisian island of Tabarka to work the Mediterranean coral banks.
In 1738, their descendants asked Carlo Emanuele III of Savoy for land, were granted San Pietro, and built the town that still bears the king's name. The inhabitants still speak tabarchino, a Ligurian variant unchanged for two centuries, and write the street signs in two languages.
The tonnara at Punta La Punta worked the bluefin tuna migration through these waters from the sixteenth century to the late twentieth. Each May the Girotonno festival fills the harbour with tuna tastings and music.
The cuisine is Ligurian on Sardinian water: pasta with tuna, capers, and pesto that locals make differently from the Genoese mainland.
Da Nicolo, Al Tonno di Corsa, Da Andrea al Cavallera and 1 more have been named by a guide.
What to see in Carloforte
- Centro storico tabarchino. Ligurian-pattern fishing town founded 1738, pastel houses along the harbour, bilingual street signs in Italian and tabarchino.
- Tonnara di Carloforte. Tuna fishery at Punta La Punta on the northern tip of the island, working the bluefin migration from the sixteenth century until recent decades.
- La Caletta and Spalmatore. Sheltered coves and beaches on the western side of the island, with clear water and access to the Capo Sandalo cliffs.
How to get to Carloforte
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving.
Our tip
May through October is the working season in Carloforte. The Girotonno bluefin festival fills the harbour for three days in late May or early June, the cleanest weather window before the heat. June through September runs warm but the sea breeze keeps the harbour cooler than mainland Sulcis.
Oristano
Why visit Oristano
Oristano sits at the mouth of the Tirso river on the Campidano plain, five metres above sea level, looking onto the gulf that carries its name. The city replaced the ancient Phoenician-Roman port of Tharros and became the capital of the Giudicato di Arborea in 1076, the central-western Sardinian state that survived from 900 to 1420.
Eleonora d'Arborea governed as regent from 1383 to 1403 and issued the Carta de Logu, one of the most advanced medieval law codes in Europe, in force on the island for four centuries. Each Carnival the city stages Sa Sartiglia, an equestrian joust at the ring whose lead rider, Su Componidori, is dressed and unmasked according to a fixed sixteenth-century ritual.
The Torre di Mariano II and the Antica Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta mark the medieval centre. The coast at Torregrande, six kilometres west, carries the Bandiera Blu rating.
Craf da Banana have been named by a guide.
What to see in Oristano
- Torre di Mariano II (Torre di San Cristoforo). Late thirteenth-century medieval tower built by Mariano II d'Arborea on Piazza Roma, one of the surviving fragments of the old city walls.
- Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Medieval cathedral on Piazza Duomo, rebuilt in the eighteenth century, with the octagonal bell tower retaining its earlier majolica-tiled cap.
- Antiquarium Arborense. Civic museum with the most important collection of Punic-Roman finds from Tharros and medieval material from the Giudicato of Arborea.
How to get to Oristano
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Cagliari is roughly 81 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the working season on the Campidano coast: warm dry days, Torregrande open, the wetlands of the Sinis full of flamingos. July and August touch thirty-five degrees on the plain and the centre empties between two and five each afternoon. April and the second half of October hold the gold light and the dry warmth that suits Tharros and the cathedral walks. La Sartiglia falls in February.
Alghero
Why visit Alghero
Alghero sits on the northwestern coast of Sardinia at the head of its own bay. The Doria of Genoa founded it in 1102.
The Catalan-Aragonese took it in 1353, expelled the Sardinians and Ligurians, and in 1354 Peter IV of Aragon repopulated the town with Catalan settlers. Four centuries of Catalan, then Spanish, rule left a language behind: about 24 percent of the population still has Algherese Catalan as a mother tongue, and 88 percent understand it, a fact that keeps the walled old town legible as something other than a museum piece.
Eleven kilometers west, the coast rises into a limestone promontory and the natural park around it, the point where the city's own bay gives way to open cliff. North of the city, Vermentino and Cannonau vineyards carry both Città del Vino and Città dell'Olio designations, a rural counterpart to the walled maritime center.
The town reads, then, as a layered thing: a Doria foundation overwritten by an Aragonese one, held between a fortified seafront and a wine country, with the language of the fourteenth-century settlers still spoken in the streets it was resettled to serve.
La Saletta, Il Pavone, Musciora and 3 more have been named by a guide.
What to see in Alghero
- Cattedrale di Santa Maria. Catalan Gothic building with a late Renaissance and Baroque interior, three naves inside, the bell tower a signature of the old town skyline.
- Bastioni Marco Polo. Golden sandstone walls with a string of defensive towers, forming the seaward edge of the centro storico.
- Grotta di Nettuno. Karst cave at Capo Caccia with stalactites and underground pools, reached by the 656-step Escala del Cabirol or by boat from the marina.
How to get to Alghero
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Sassari is roughly 35 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the season in Alghero. The bay opens, the ferries from Genova and Civitavecchia run full, and the centro storico fills with day-trippers and Catalan visitors who treat the place as a long-lost cousin. July and August are hot and crowded, with Capo Caccia and the Lazzaretto beaches reaching capacity by mid-morning.
