Sardinia is a checklist of passions. Particularly for Jeff and Max and me. My passion for the coast, not as an emasculated swimming pool backdrop for someone’s second home, but as a pure and wild wonder of nature. Passion for history, for all that has gone before us and left its mark. Passion for the beauty of this island’s sea and rock, of the curve of mountains, the stretch of fields rippling with sun-tanned grasses, of bushes dripping cream and pink and burgundy flowers. Sardinia has long stretches of coast that are absolutely, gloriously, echoingly empty of people and houses. Mile after mile of trees and grasses, rounded mountains, ice-white cliffs and water in every conceivable shade of blue, from royal to aqua to nearly green to, at times, almost purple. And tucked away in silent grassy plots, or sheltering under trees, or edging the shore are ruins from cultures and peoples who go back in time to the 7th century BC. Human footsteps have walked this island for millennia, and yet in many places the island is empty.
Sardinia is a heady mixture for coastal-philes and amateur historians such as we. Initially, it was not a top destination in our trip. I added it to the itinerary in a careless, “sure why not?” sort of way, having had to first look it up on a map to see where in the world it was. When I realized it was part of Italy, and was an island with a reputation for good beaches, I thought that we could certainly pass a pleasant week there.
Indeed.
Kansas is pleasant. Oz is pure magic. And as far as I’m concerned, Sardinia is all Oz.
We stayed in Alghero, a 13th century walled town on the wilder, less populated and less visited west coast of Sardinia. We never made it off the west coast. You could spend a month, a happy blissful month, just exploring the west coast, drifting from one jaw-dropping beach to another, interspersed with ambles into history that turn the island into an open-air museum.
Alghero perches on the rocks above the shimmering Mediterranean. There is modern beach-towny stuff on its perimeter but its heart is a walled stone city, built by the marauding Catalans in the 1200s. The walls encircle the old town like a mother’s protective embrace. You can walk along the top of the walls, the narrow, cobblestone streets of the medieval town snaking off on one side, the sea sighing up against the walls on the other. Periodically there are round towers, built of blonde sandstone, rising in impressive bulk along the wall. The sky stretches above, without the interruption of skyscrapers, without the clutter of buildings. And below the wall is the crystal clear sea. We sat and watched cormorants diving for fish. We could see their snakelike bodies fly-swimming under the water, necks outstretched, wings pinned back, zooming through the water like a dart. Then they pop up to the surface, throw back their heads, and swallow a wriggling fish. You can see the birds swimming like fish, the fish flying away from them like birds, the water like air, so clear that it appears the birds and fish are simply floating below you.
Long slabs of rock jut into the sea below the wall. Then the wall turns, the town turning with it like dance partners well-used to each other’s bodies, moving in syncopation to the music. The wall and the town curve in, and now wide sandy beaches appear, one after another. The town goes to play there, the wall now replaced by a bike and walking path. The beach town vibe kicks in.
We decided to explore south of Alghero, and drove our little square rented Fiat down to Tharros, an archaeological site and former Phoenician-Roman town on the very tip of the Sinis Peninsula in southwest Sardinia. The drive from Alghero to Tharros is fantastic. A two-lane highway ripples along the coast. Hills roll down to the water’s edge, sometimes ending in sheer white cliffs and other times in bush-covered edges. For 50 kilometers or more, there is nothing but treed hills, bushes and the shimmering sea. Heaven. A stretch of coast still wild in this world. I long to be a millionaire to buy it, save it as it is right now before the developers and realtors and cruise ship operators discover this area and conquer it, like the Phoenicians and the Romans and all the bandits through time have done before.
Along the way to Tharros, we followed a few signs off the road into a dirt parking lot near a field. We walked up a rutted dusty road, through sunbleached grass, to Cornus – or what remains of it. It was built in 215 BC, first a Phoenician outpost, then a Roman one. No one is around. We walk through a little gate and we can see the remains of walls among the grass and bushes. Then a stone sarcophagus, then another. We are in the ancient town’s cemetery. We backtrack out and walk over to another area. A short flight of stone steps leads up to nothing now – but before, a temple perhaps. Near the steps is a round depression in the ground, lined with stones, with steps leading into it. A well? Then Max walks down the steps and sits onto a carved stone seat, leans back and drapes his arms along a circular wall. It emerges from the mist: it is a bath, with two seating areas and steps leading down into it. A bath in a town built two centuries before Christ, still intact, still understandable, in a quiet field off a winding, two-lane road where machines the bath’s builder could never have imagined whizz by.
Further south we come to Tharros on the very tip of the Sinis Peninsula. Here three civilizations left their mark: the mysterious Nurraghic people of Sardinia, stretching back in time to the 7th century BC, then the marauding Phoenicians, then the conquering Romans. You park beside a blindingly white beach lined by the clear blue sea, then climb a hill beneath the blue dome of sky, and cresting the hill, Tharros is below you. On one end are the circles of stones built by the Nurraghic people as homes, temples, offerings to the gods – it is not known. Among them are Phoenician remains, including hundreds of clay pots that were found, beautiful and intact, from the 2nd century BC. The remains of a Roman road, the interlocked gray stones intact, leads down the hill to the Roman part of the town, and standing at the bottom are two white columns facing the sea. The only thing not mysterious about the place is why civilization after civilization chose this spot to build upon. A spit of land, jutting into the sea, with all-encompassing views over water and land. No surprise attacks would be possible, and greeting all visitors, enemy or friend, would be the gleaming town of Tharros, climbing up the hill, and at its feet the never-ending sea.
Sounds and looks fabulous! Love that vision of Max sitting in the bath in the field.
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