Bandiera Blu
Bandiera Blu in Sardinia
7 towns
Sardinia holds 7 Bandiera Blu sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Sassari, Nuoro, and Oristano provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are La Maddalena, Oristano, and Badesi. 4 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
La Maddalena
Province: Sassari · 19 m
The only inhabited town of a sixty-island granite archipelago between Sardinia and Corsica, and the place Giuseppe Garibaldi chose to die.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Palau
Province: Sassari · 5 m
The Gallura port with a weather-shaped granite bear on the headland that gave the town its emblem.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Capestrano
Province: L'Aquila
A hilltop village at 465 meters above the Tirino valley, where in 1934 a farmer turned up the 6th-century BC limestone Warrior of Capestrano.
Morcone
Province: Benevento
A Sannite hill town at 600 meters above the Tammaro valley, with 5th-century BC walls and the convent where a future saint took his vows.
Fénis
Province: Aosta Valley
The Castello di Fénis, with its double ring of crenellated walls, eight cylindrical towers, and frescoed inner courtyard, sits at the centre of a small Aostan commune east of Aosta, with an Apennine reserve climbing south to 3,000m.
Vinci
Province: Firenze
The hill town on Montalbano where Leonardo was born in 1452, with a ship-shaped castle that now holds his machines.
Mezzojuso
Province: Palermo
An Arbëreshë village of two mother churches, one Latin, one Byzantine, whose Arabic name means the houses of Joseph.