The best beaches near Cagliari are the ones people picture when they picture Sardinia: white sand, rounded granite, water that runs from clear to jade to deep blue within thirty metres of the shore. They are about an hour from…
Archives for September 2026
Poetto Beach and the Devil’s Saddle
Poetto is the reason Cagliari is unlike other Italian capitals of their size. Seven or eight kilometres of pale sand, water that stays shallow and clear for the first hundred metres, and a bus from the middle of the city…
How to Get to Cagliari and Around It
Getting to Cagliari is easier than getting to most of Sardinia, because the airport is seven kilometres from the centre and there is a train from inside the airport grounds that reaches the city in about six minutes. Getting around…
The Best Time to Visit Cagliari
The best time to visit Cagliari is late March to June, or September to November. May and June are the best months for the city itself. September and October are the best for swimming, because the sea here holds its…
Where to Eat in Cagliari
Where to eat in Cagliari is really a question about what to order, because Sardinian food is not mainland Italian food with a sea view. It is a separate cuisine with its own pasta shapes, its own bread, its own…
Where to Stay in Cagliari
Where to stay in Cagliari comes down to one decision made four ways, because the historic centre is four quarters and they are genuinely different places to wake up. Castello is on top of the ridge and involves stairs. Marina…
The Best Things to Do in Cagliari
The best things to do in Cagliari divide into three groups that have almost nothing to do with each other: a medieval upper town on a limestone ridge, an eight kilometre beach with a flamingo colony behind it, and one…
The Perfect Cagliari Itinerary: 2 to 3 Days
Two days is enough to see Cagliari properly. Three is enough to see it and get out to one of the archaeological sites without spending the whole day looking at your watch. This is how I would spend them, in…
The Complete Guide to Cagliari
Cagliari is a working capital city that happens to have eight kilometres of white sand inside its bus network, a flamingo colony behind the beach, and a Bronze Age civilisation an hour up the road. It is not a resort….
Ostuni, and the Trees That Were Here First
I went inland, which is the direction nobody drives. Everyone here goes down. Down to the coves, down to the sea, down through the olives with the windows open and the radio on, and the olives are the thing you…
The Morning I Drove Inland
Ten minutes. That is the whole distance, and I want to put it down before anything else, because it is the only fact in this entry that matters. Ten minutes from a road where the cars cost more than houses,…
A Costa Smeralda Itinerary: 3 to 5 Days
Three days is the minimum that works here, five is the sweet spot, and a fortnight is a lot unless lying still is the whole point of the holiday, which is a perfectly respectable position. The reason three is the…
