Coastal towns
Coastal towns in Sardinia
11 towns
Towns on the sea. A cliff town high above the water counts here rather than under mountains, because the sea is why you would go.
Castelsardo
Province: Sassari · 114 m
A Doria sea fortress at 114 meters above the Gulf of Asinara, Genoese from 1100, Aragonese from 1448, Savoyard from the 1700s.
Badesi
Province: Sassari · 102 m
A Gallura commune founded by shepherding families in the 1700s, its territory running from a hilltop village down to eight kilometers of dunes at the Coghinas river mouth.
Santa Teresa Gallura
Province: Sassari · 44 m
The northernmost town in Sardinia, founded in 1808 on a Turin-style grid above the Strait of Bonifacio and 11 kilometers from Corsica.
Posada
Province: Nuoro · 37 m
The capital of the Baronia, a 3,000-person village on a 71-meter rock with a 13th-century tower over the valley.
Orosei
Province: Nuoro · 19 m
A small Baroque town at 19 meters in the Cedrino valley, two kilometers from the limestone gulf whose southern coves are reached only by boat.
Tortolì
Province: Nuoro · 15 m
Co-capital of Ogliastra on the central-east coast, paired with the port of Arbatax and its red porphyry cliffs.
Bosa
Province: Oristano · 10 m
A colour-washed riverside town on Sardinia's only navigable river, with a Malaspina castle on the hill and the tanneries of Sas Conzas along the Temo.
Alghero
Province: Sassari · 7 m
The Catalan city of northwest Sardinia, repopulated by Peter IV of Aragon in 1354.
Oristano
Province: Oristano · 5 m
The old capital of the Giudicato di Arborea, city of Eleonora and the Carta de Logu, host of Sa Sartiglia equestrian joust at Carnival.
Palau
Province: Sassari · 5 m
The Gallura port with a weather-shaped granite bear on the headland that gave the town its emblem.
Stintino
Province: Sassari · 3 m
The northernmost tip of north-west Sardinia and the gateway to Asinara National Park, fronted by a shallow-shelf beach under an Aragonese watchtower.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Visso
Province: Macerata
The northern Sibillini gate at 607 meters where the Nera meets the Ussita, holding one of two surviving manuscripts of Leopardi's L'Infinito.
Goriano Sicoli
Province: L'Aquila
At 720 meters in the Subequana valley, a medieval village drawn by M.C. Escher in 1929 keeps a May ritual folklorists trace to Demeter.
Ugento
Province: Lecce
A Messapian-Roman town five kilometers from the Ionian, where a Baroque castle sits on the walls of the ancient city of Ozan.
Fontanellato
Province: Parma
A Parma-plain town built around the Rocca Sanvitale, the moated fortress at its center.
Pescina
Province: L'Aquila
A Marsica town at 735 meters, on the rim of the drained Fucino basin, that lost five thousand of six thousand people in a single morning in 1915.