Carloforte

A slice of Liguria adrift off Sardinia’s south-west coast: Carloforte, the only town on the Island of San Pietro, was founded in 1738 by coral fishermen from Pegli via Tabarka, and their descendants still speak a Genoese dialect in the streets. Between tuna heritage, red basalt coves and carrugi lanes, it feels like nowhere else in Sardinia.

Why visit

Carloforte offers a double escape: a boat crossing, then a town that belongs to another world. Its lanes and pastel houses climb from the port in true Genoese style; its larder is the Mediterranean’s great red tuna, worked into couscous and countless seafood dishes; its coast is a jagged necklace of coves, sea stacks and one of Italy’s westernmost lighthouses. Swimmers, cyclists, divers and food travellers all find a compact island playground — with the sister town of Calasetta and its beaches just across the channel.

Character and history

The story is extraordinary: Ligurian families from Pegli had fished coral from the Tunisian island of Tabarka since the sixteenth century; in 1738 King Carlo Emanuele III granted them the uninhabited Island of San Pietro, and they named their new town after him. Some forty years later the same tabarchini community founded Calasetta across the channel on Sant’Antioco. Fishing shaped everything — the island’s tuna fishery is the last surviving on the Sardinian coast and among the oldest in the Mediterranean, and the annual ritual run still takes place in late spring. The Madonna dello Schiavo, patron of the island, protects coral divers and tuna fishermen alike, and the town’s monuments remember the sea: defensive walls with the Porta del Leone, the trachyte Torre San Vittorio — an observatory from 1898 and now a multimedia history museum — and the marble monument to the founding king, raised in 1786.

What to see

Begin on the water’s edge of the near shore: Girin, on the south-eastern coast of San Pietro, is a sheltered cove of soft shell-sand between low red basalt headlands, facing away from the mistral and gently shelving — a favourite with families and divers. Off the coast, Island Piana – Carloforte preserves the concession of a historic tuna fishery granted at the end of the seventeenth century and active until 1964; today it is a roadless nature reserve where falcons, herring gulls and piping plovers nest. Across the channel on Sant’Antioco, the Tower di Calasetta — built of volcanic stone around 1757, before the town below it — watches the sea passage between the islands, with an archaeological museum of Phoenician-Punic finds on its ground floor. Finally, Portopaglietto Beach lies on the mainland shore at Portoscuso, the old fishing gateway to the islands: a golden arc between trachyte cliffs, shaded by a pine grove, with the striped lighthouse rock of La Ghinghetta offshore.

How to experience

Take the ferry from Calasetta or Portoscuso — the crossing itself is part of the pleasure — and leave the car behind: the island is small, roads are few, and bikes and scooters are the classic way to reach the coves. Swim and snorkel your way around the coast, saving late afternoon for Capo Sandalo’s lighthouse and the twin stacks of Le Colonne. Eat seriously: red tuna in every form, tabarchino couscous, and the town’s own recipes in port-side trattorias. If your timing allows, come for the Girotonno in late May or June, the international festival built around tuna cookery, or for the Madonna dello Schiavo’s festivities. Between swims, climb to Torre San Vittorio for the island’s story in images.

Practical planning

Carloforte is reached by frequent ferries from Calasetta (short crossing) and Portoscuso; cars can come over but are unnecessary and awkward in the narrow lanes. Book accommodation ahead in May–June around the festival and throughout summer; the town offers small hotels, guesthouses and apartments, with a campeggio option in season. Beaches on the island are pebbly-rocky rather than sandy in places — water shoes help — and the mistral days that make surfers happy can close excursion routes, so check sea conditions each morning. Restaurants concentrate around the port and the old quarter; reservations for tuna-focused tables in festival weeks are wise.

Nearby places

The channel crossing leads to Sant’Antioco, the large southern island with its Phoenician roots, and to Iglesias, a medieval mining city in the hills of the Iglesiente. On the mainland shore, the ports facing the archipelago start at Carbonia — modern town, ancient archaeology — and the beaches of the south-west coast run on towards the dunes of the southern shore. (Neighbours taken from the same-region candidate list, as the province field is blank in the canonical record.)