The wealthy continue to flock to the posh hotels at Porto Cervo. This is also the place where Princess Diana and Dodi spent their last night together before flying off to Paris.
The waters here really are a deep emerald green. The area is stuffed with sweet-smelling shrubs and trees, and mimosa and oleander shade the walls of the pastel-coloured villas that dot the landscape. There’s a Moorish feel to the architecture - perhaps because of the island’s proximity to North Africa. Hedges of rosemary and lavender cluster against huge granite boulders which people have brought down from the hills to use as gate posts or garden sculpture.
Italy: Sardinia - A Place of Legends
Sardinia is full of legends about witches and giants, and it’s not hard to see how these came about. The gigantic rocks all around the coast have weathered into strange shapes; ‘hook-nosed witches’, strange ‘birds’ and ‘animals’ gaze down on the white beaches. Some of the cleanest beaches in Italy are in Sardinia and swimming in these clear turquoise waters is heaven.
Italy: Sardinia - The Barbagia and Ancient Nuraghe
Sardinia has two faces, one is the coast with its resorts and hotels, the other is the mountainous interior, the mysterious Barbagia region which contains around 8,000 strange, ancient structures known as nuraghe, which are found nowhere else in the world. According to the locals, this is the real Sardinia, full of history, with many small mountain villages and remains of ancient civilisations.
This area is accessible only by road. There is public transport but you obviously have greater independence when travelling by car, and the roads are excellent with little traffic. Hire a car in Porto Cervo and head for the hills The nuraghe, squat circular towers, first appeared some seven thousand years ago (from around 1800 to 500 BC), dotting the landscape like giant beehives. Some of these structures, up to 50-feet high, are said to be the largest and technically most perfect megalithic formations in Europe.
Italy: Sardinia - Giant Tombs
The people who built the nuraghe also left behind huge graves, known as Giants’ Tombs. They were originally built as communal graves in which the bones of the dead were piled up. Some were found to contain as many as 100 to 200 skeletons. In time, the locals forgot what their original use was and they became known as Giants’ Tombs, contributing to the many myths that have emerged over the centuries. Some are at least 35-feet long. After travelling through this dramatic landscape, with its high mountains and huge empty spaces dotted with strangely carved rocks which look like, birds, animals and even witches, You might be ready to believe anything.
There’s something a bit surreal about the Barbagia. There are no Tuscany-like medieval hilltop villages. The mountain tops are bare, jagged, and can look menacing when a cloud covers the sun and the peaks suddenly turn dark. It looks like a land in which it would be hard to survive and yet, when you take a second look, the mountain slopes and isolated valleys are groomed and look well cared for. This is entirely because of the constant munching of some of Sardinia’s four million sheep.
Italy: Sardinia - Nuoro
Nuoro is the main town in this region. It is referred to as the heart of the Barbagia and is the birthplace of Grazia Deledda, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was born in 1871 and wrote close to fifty books; in all of them Nuoro is at the centre.
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