Portopaglietto

Portopaglietto began as the little harbour from which boats crossed to the Sulcis islands; today it is Portoscuso's town beach, an arc of golden sand held between two trachyte cliffs, washed by clear water in sight of San Pietro island and the red-and-black lighthouse on the Ghinghetta rock.

Why it matters

Portopaglietto shows how a working cove becomes a town's seaside without losing its character. The former porticciolo served crossings to the Sulcis islands; today Portopaglietto is Portoscuso’s civic beach. Its setting is unusually complete for a town beach — an arc of about 250 metres of golden sand enclosed and sheltered by two cliffs, a broad shady pine wood immediately behind, a rocky islet with a striped lighthouse just offshore, and the long silhouette of Isola di San Pietro drawn on the horizon. The cove’s position near Portovesme connects it to the maritime route between the mainland and Carloforte.

What to notice

Stand at the centre of the arc and read the bay from north to south. The northern promontory is the one that breaks the wind, above all the maestrale, helping to shelter the cove. Offshore, the scoglio La Ghinghetta carries a small lighthouse painted in red and black bands. Beyond it, on clear days, the coastline of the island of San Pietro is visible — the same island that Carloforte inhabits. The sides of the beach are rocky, rising towards trachyte cliffs, and the southern one is crowned by the Torre di Portoscuso, the Spanish-built fortress erected to defend the coast and the men who fished tuna and coral, now the emblem of the town and a venue for cultural events. Behind the sand, the pine wood gives the shade that the treeless Sulcis coast rarely offers.

Context and history

Portoscuso is a borgo of Spanish origin that has always lived from fishing, above all the tuna hunt, and Portopaglietto's past as a porticciolo for island crossings belongs to that same maritime economy. The seventeenth-century tonnara at Su Pranu, in Portoscuso’s territory, recalls the importance of tuna fishing to the town. The fortress above the southern cliff guarded that wealth: tuna and coral were the town's prizes, and coastal towers like this one formed the Spanish and later Savoy system of watchtowers along the south-western shore. The beach forms part of Portoscuso’s maritime history and its connections to the Sulcis islands.