Villasimius

Sardinia’s southeastern tip folds itself around Villasimius, a former farming village that has become the island’s most polished beach town. Within a short drive you get powder-white coves, a marine protected area, a museum of underwater archaeology, and headlands where flamingos feed at dusk. It suits travellers who want the sea first, with history and wine country nearby.

Why visit

Villasimius answers a simple question well: where can you swim in genuinely beautiful water without giving up restaurants, evening strolls and reliable services? The town faces the Gulf of Cagliari across a coast that curls like a bracelet of beaches and small cliffs, crowned by the Capo Carbonara promontory. Since the late 1960s tourism has been the town’s main economy, and two generations of hospitality show in the quality of the seafront hotels, family-run trattorias and boat operators. Yet the seasonal crowds never quite outnumber the coves. On the protected eastern side you can still find a rocky inlet such as Cala Caterina at low season, and the marine reserve keeps the seabed interesting for anyone with a mask. For divers, the waters between the headland and the islands are known as a graveyard of wrecks from every era, which is exactly what makes them rewarding.

Character and history

People have valued this corner of Sardinia for a long time. Nuragic communities left their stone towers across the territory between roughly the nineteenth and sixth centuries BC, and Phoenician and Carthaginian traders followed. At Is Cuccureddus a sanctuary first held by Phoenicians, possibly dedicated to Astarte, later became a Roman settlement with its own baths near Santa Maria. The medieval centuries were harsh: pirate raids emptied the coast, and the village — recorded as Carbonara by the thirteenth century — survived inland until repopulation in the early nineteenth century under the House of Savoy made it a comune in 1838. It took its present name soon after. Granite quarrying and shepherding carried the town until visitors discovered the beaches in the late 1960s, and the transformation since has been thorough but not total: out of season, Villasimius still feels like a village of a few thousand people.

What to see

Small as it is, the town keeps two kinds of treasure. The first is under the ground and the sea, gathered in the Museum archeologico di Villasimius, which occupies a nineteenth-century farmhouse and walks you from Nuragic times through the Spanish centuries. Highlights include Punic amphorae recovered off the Isola dei Cavoli, the cargo of a first-century Roman ship carrying building materials, and cannons and gilded azulejos from a fifteenth-century Spanish wreck. The second treasure is the coast itself. Porto Sa Ruxi opens the scenic road east of town with a trio of coves scalloped into the headland, good early in the morning before the umbrellas arrive. Offshore, the low dark silhouette of the Serpentara Island marks the southern edge of the marine protected area; trip boats circle its granite shapes and the guarded islet of Cavoli. North along the coast, the Torre delle Stelle promontory takes its name from a Spanish watchtower and separates two of the area’s most loved sand beaches.

How to experience

Give the sea your mornings, when the light is clean and the water calm. Snorkellers should head for the rocky margins of Capo Carbonara, where schools of fish follow you over posidonia meadows; dive centres in town run trips to the wrecks and to the walls of Serpentara. A late-afternoon walk on the Notteri pond near Porto Giunco often rewards you with flamingos, and the viewpoint above the sandbar shows the odd, lovely illusion of two seas. Boat excursions leave the small harbour daily in season and are the easiest way to see Serpentara properly. Save one evening for a slow dinner of spaghetti with sea urchin or grilled fish, and another for exploring the interior roads toward Castiadas, where strawberry-tree honey and Cannonau wine come from. The Feast of the Madonna del Naufrago in late July, with its sea procession over a submerged statue by the sculptor Pinuccio Sciola, is the town’s most distinctive celebration.

Practical planning

Villasimius lies about an hour’s drive east of Cagliari, whose airport and port feed the town; a car is close to essential for reaching the outlying coves. The season runs sharply from late spring to early autumn: services, ferries and beach clubs wind down outside it, while summer weekends bring heavy traffic on the coastal road, so book accommodation and car hire well ahead. Check current opening arrangements for the archaeological museum on the Sardegna Turismo site before setting out, as hours change with the season. Reserve campsites, shaded shoes for rocky coves, and respect the rules of the marine protected area, which prohibits anchoring and fishing in core zones.

Nearby places

Cagliari, Sardinia’s stately capital, makes the natural gateway and deserves a day for its old quarter before you drive out. The relaxed fishing-and-beach town of Pula sits on the same southern coast, handy for the ruins of Nora. Inland, Barumini guards the island’s most important nuragic complex, an easy half-day trip for anyone curious about Sardinia before the Phoenicians.