The strange and seductive story of Sardinia
A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to be working with a small travel company that created bespoke itineraries for those who wanted their holiday experiences to be truly out of the ordinary. As well as writing up hotel and destination descriptions I was occasionally invited to conduct more in-depth research. When it was suggested that we might like to explore Sardinia on their behalf we were not slow to accept! As our departure approached, however, I realised I had no firm idea of the place at all. The word “Sardinia” is evocative, but of what, exactly?
Been there, got the T shirt, but saw nothing
My wife and I had been there about fifteen years ago on a corporate incentive trip to the Forte Village. This resort is at the south western tip and we were now headed to the north east. What’s more, apart from arriving and departing in a coach from Cagliari airport we never left the complex, and could have been anywhere from the Costa Del Sol to Crete. So for both these reasons, our previous visit was of precious little use to us.
Sun, sand and extortion
Keen to do some due diligence I thumbed through our ancient pile of Condé Nast Traveller magazines and found two articles. The first was written by someone who spent their entire week, as we had, never leaving the Forte Village (1000 words about seven whole days on a sun lounger, quite a feat).
The second painted a picture of an island afflicted by a familiar, but very extreme, form of Mediterranean schizophrenia. The stunning coastline has been much developed for tourism while the mountainous interior remains largely untamed, stubbornly medieval, and inhabited by savagely suspicious people who still celebrate arcane pagan rituals. This didn’t worry me unduly - I have Cornish relatives just like that.
Where is everybody? Central Sardinia.
But then the article started to describe the endemic banditry which it claimed was still rife. Alarmingly it stated that “30 bandit outlaws are now hiding out” in the hills and that “last winter a young woman, kidnapped a year before, was finally released”, adding that “at least six others, kidnapped over the past few years, had never been found.” The article reassured readers that tourists were not at risk – the brigands targeted carefully selected members of Sardinian families known to have fat bank accounts.
Sign in bank - anti theft system installed to foil armed robbery attempts.
This was from the May 1998 issue of the magazine. Hopefully things had become more civilized over the intervening 17 years. And it was unlikely we’d be mistaken for wealthy locals. But it did make me wonder what kind of country we were about to visit.
I bought a handful of guidebooks and a road map then settled down for some research. Here’s a quick overview of what I learnt. Firstly, Sardinia is quite big – it’s about the size of Wales, and with lots of regional variety from coast to mountains, north to south, east to west. Secondly it’s an island. The fact is obvious, but the way this has shaped its history, and created the Sardinia you’ll experience today, is not.
1,000 years of prosperity
If EasyJet did time travel (I’m glad they don’t – their website is confusing enough as it is) and you landed in Sardinia between 1800 and 500BC, you’d have found it quite busy. This was the tail end of the Bronze Age, when metals like copper (the main constituent of bronze) and lead were in high demand. Both were plentiful on the island, which was therefore an important trade hub and supported the Nuraghi civilization, which was unique to Sardinia. This was so named because its people built about 10,000 squat circular towers, or nuraghi. Made out of huge interlocking blocks of stone, and surrounded by villages, these are the most technically perfect megalithic buildings in Europe. They were so sturdily constructed that around 7,000 still survive, which means that on average there’s one every two miles across the island.
Nuraghi near Pausania in northern Sardinia
2,500 years of invasion, subjugation, exploitation and vicious feuding
From about 500BC onwards the island was hit by successive waves of foreigners. Phoenicians, then Carthaginians and then Romans settled on the shores and sought to subjugate the islanders, who retreated to the wild mountains of the interior – the Nuraghi civilization disappeared leaving their towers behind.
Remains of Nuraghi village at del Monte Tiscali
Next came a series of Arabs raids (711AD – 1015). They were eventually seen off by the combined fleets of Genoa and Pisa, who in turn squabbled over domination of the island for the next 300 years (the inhabitants joining in the scrap themselves rather than hiding this time).
In 1297 Pope Boniface VIII (whose authority over the island was extremely tenuous) gave Sardinia to the king of Aragon, James II. It took 26 years for James to kick out Pisa and Genoa and the island was then ruthlessly exploited by the Spanish until the War of the Spanish Succession, ending with Sardinia being handed over to the Dukes of Savoy and Piedmont in 1718.
Keep calm and carry on squabbling
With dominions covering a corner of northern Italy around Turin and bits of the French Alps the Piedmontese didn’t want Sardinia, describing it thus “The nobles are poor, the country itself is miserable and depopulated, its citizens idle and without any sort of trade – and the air is most unhealthy” adding that “the vices to which these people are most inclined are theft, murder and cheating”. Savage banditry was rife and the new rulers ruthlessly tried to eradicate it, without any success.
Sardinian shepherd’s hut in Gola di Gorropu Gorge
Their efforts to bring the island into the 18th century were hampered by the fact that over half the inhabitants were nomadic shepherds roaming the inaccessible mountains. The new rulers decided the island would be easier to manage if these people jolly well settled down and grew something in one place. The Piedmontese imported their own peasantry to show the locals how it was done. Bad move - it led to about 70 years of intermittent rioting.
The French Revolution saw the island invaded by a force that included a young artillery captain named Napoleon Bonaparte. The Sardinians kicked them out and it went back to chaos as usual.
No man’s land
The root problem was the fact that there was no private ownership of land – each village decided how to use the fields under their jurisdiction in accordance with the common law enshrined in the Carta de Logu, their constitution of 1392. One year a field would be available to the peasants for planting, the next to the shepherds as pasture.
This was a recipe for continuous hostility and when the Piedmontese tried to introduce the privatisation of common land in 1806 it sparked even more intense violence whilst making the few rich even richer and the many poor even poorer, with banditry more virulent than ever. In 1848 a Piedmontese nobleman wrote that “Sardinia is in a pitiful state. The fields lie fallow, the countryside abandoned, the cattle stocks largely destroyed. Poverty and famine are rife in most villages”.
In 1855 the heroic military leader Garibaldi bought half of Capera, a small island off the northern tip of Sardinia. As well as lending his name to a biscuit he came out of retirement to assist with the unification of Italy and in 1861 his beloved Sardinia joined the new state. However, the ruthless taxation and exploitation by absentee rulers and vested interests intensified and banditry not only escalated but was seen as a noble political endeavour in the cause of independence.
And so to the present
Over the course of the next 150 years the island was dragged kicking and screaming into the same era as the rest of Europe, but if one cares to look the signs of the tempestuous legacy are not far from the surface even now.
Doorway in a remote village
In the inland town of Aggius we went into a little shop and I saw a tiny woman. My wife is 5’4’’ and this lady, possibly in her forties, barely came up to her shoulder. Then, to our amazement, an even more diminutive figure joined her – her head was about an inch above my elbow and I’m 5’9”. Enjoying a cappuccino a few minutes later Sheila pointed to a Fiat Punto parked ten feet away. I could just make out the very top of an old lady’s white haired head above the bottom of the passenger window. Suddenly we saw what generation after generation of grinding poverty and malnutrition has on a people – history was rendered paper thin flesh before our eyes.
Now it’s your turn
The final invasion, as you’ve guessed, is the tourists – the island’s population is about 1.6 million, with about 10 million visitors a year.
However, outside of August it feels surprisingly uncrowded. In June we visited some of the top beaches only to find many of them almost entirely deserted. The fact is that Sardinia’s coastline represents almost a quarter of that of all Italy. It totals 1850 kilometres, and it’s all stunning, so you’d have to work very hard to find a stretch where you’ll feel even slightly cramped.
Beach near northern tip of Sardinia
What’s more, the development of holiday resorts, hotels and villas has been rigorously regulated – even the most popular areas are so low rise and low impact that you have to look quite carefully at the landscape to see them at all amidst the rocky outcrops and dense vegetation.
In ancient times invaders seldom managed to venture far inland. And that’s still the case. There are some good roads, but in between are miles of untamed mountains, dark ravines, thick forests and meadows of bright sun-baked yellow grass, with the occasional village perched on a hilltop. It’s still very much a land of peasants and shepherds where only the most intrepid visitors venture - and are still viewed as something of a novelty by the locals.
Exploring the Gola di Gorropu Gorge
So, as we said at the beginning, there are two Sardinia’s, the 21st century seaside Sardinia and the ancient, largely unchanged, interior Sardinia. On this trip we experienced both, staying three days at Hotel Su Gologone beneath the soaring cliffs of the Supramonte mountain range and another three on the edge of the Costa Smerelda, the island’s most upmarket stretch of coastline, at the Hotel Villa Del Golfo. It was a great combination and one we’ll describe more fully in the next few posts.
The perfect end to a perfect day.
