Ten minutes inland from a coast where a hotel room can cost four thousand euros a night, there is a stone tower that was already ancient when Rome was a collection of huts, and on the morning I went there was nobody at it but me.
That gap is the most interesting thing about this part of Sardinia and almost nobody staying on the beaches ever crosses it.
The sites around Arzachena are bronze age, roughly 1800 to 1000 BC, and there are seven of them within a short drive of each other. They are not ruins in the Roman sense, all columns and marble and a museum shop. They are enormous blocks of granite stacked without mortar, standing in dry grass, and they have been standing there for three and a half thousand years.
What a nuraghe actually is
A nuraghe is a tower built of unmortared stone, wide at the base and stepping inward as it rises, with a corbelled chamber inside where each course of stone overhangs the one below until they meet at the top. No mortar, no arch as the Romans understood it, and no crane.
There are something like seven thousand of them on Sardinia. Nowhere else on earth has anything quite like them, and there is still no settled answer as to what they were for: fortress, watchtower, temple, granary, status symbol, or all of those at different times.
The best one here is La Prisgiona, which is not just a tower but a whole village. The central tower stands with two side towers attached, and around its foot are the low circular walls of perhaps a hundred huts, with a well that still holds water. You can walk into the tower, put your hand on stone that was set in place before the Trojan War, and look up the inside of the cone.
Standing in the middle of a bronze age village with the door of somebody’s house at your feet is a different experience from looking at a monument behind a rope.
Nuraghe Albucciu is the other one worth your time, unusual because it is built against a natural granite outcrop rather than freestanding, and it sits close to the road so it is quick to add on.
The tombs, which are stranger
The tombs of the giants are the ones I would not miss.
A tomba dei giganti is a long communal burial chamber, a corridor of stone slabs, fronted by a curved forecourt of upright stones arranged like arms opening outward. At the centre of that curve stands a single enormous carved slab, sometimes four metres high, with a small low doorway cut through the bottom of it.
The doorway is far too small to carry a body through. It was almost certainly symbolic. The dead went in from the end, and the front of the tomb was for the living to gather in.
Coddu Ecchju has the finest central slab of the group. Li Lolghi has a longer approach and a more dramatic setting on a low ridge with the country falling away around it, and it is the one that stayed with me.
They got their name because later people, finding chambers ten and twelve metres long, drew the obvious conclusion about who must have been buried in them.
There is also Li Muri, older again, a necropolis of stone circles from a culture that predates the nuraghi entirely.
What it costs and how it works
The sites use a cumulative ticket that gets cheaper the more you visit, bought at the ticket office of any participating site:
- one site, €4
- two, €7
- three, €10
- and so on to all seven for €20
There is also a version at €36 that adds an audio guide and the civic museum. For most people, three sites at €10 is exactly the right amount of bronze age Sardinia for one morning.
Hours run roughly 9am to 7pm daily in summer, and 10am to 4pm Tuesday to Sunday in winter, though these do shift with the season and the site. Check on the day if you are arriving late.
Getting to them
All of them are within about ten to fifteen minutes of Arzachena, on small roads running between cork oaks with their trunks stripped red and granite outcrops sitting in the fields. Signposting is decent but not generous, and a couple of the sites are down unsurfaced tracks, so have the map loaded before you leave the main road.
You need a car. There is no bus that serves them.
Practical notes that matter more here than at most sites: there is no shade at any of them, the ground is dry uneven grass and loose stone, and the middle of a summer day is genuinely unpleasant. Go at opening. Take water, wear real shoes rather than sandals, and allow twenty to thirty minutes per site plus the driving between.
There are no cafés at the sites. Arzachena has everything you need and is five minutes away.
Doing it in a morning
Here is the route that works.
Start at La Prisgiona at nine, because it is the best of them and you want it before the heat and before anyone else arrives. Give it forty minutes; the village around the tower is the part people skip and should not.
Drive ten minutes to Coddu Ecchju, which takes twenty minutes and has the best carved slab.
Then Li Lolghi for the setting, if you have the appetite, or Nuraghe Albucciu if you would rather have a second tower than a second tomb.
Three sites, €10, back at the coast by half past twelve, and you have seen the thing that was here for three thousand years before anyone thought to sell the view.
Why bother
Because the coast outside is the most designed landscape in Italy, built in 1962 to a set of rules about how it should look, and these stones are the exact opposite of that. Nobody is maintaining an image at La Prisgiona. There is dry grass, an enormous amount of granite, some lizards, and the outline of where people lived.
I found the contrast between the two did something to my week, and it is the day I wrote about afterwards in the journal.
Other inland options for the same half-day, including the Thursday market at San Pantaleo, are in the day trips guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a nuraghe?
A dry-stone tower from the Sardinian bronze age, roughly 1800 to 1000 BC, put up without mortar and roofed by overlapping courses of stone rather than by an arch. Around seven thousand survive on the island and nothing quite like them exists anywhere else on earth. Archaeologists still argue over whether they were forts, temples, stores or simply statements of status.
How much does it cost to visit the Arzachena archaeological sites?
A cumulative ticket bought at any participating site: €4 for one, €7 for two, €10 for three, rising to €20 for all seven. A €36 version adds an audio guide and the civic museum. Three sites for €10 is about right for a single morning.
What are the tombs of the giants?
Communal graves of the same period, built as a long stone corridor with a curved facade of standing stones in front, set like arms opening toward whoever gathered there. The great central slab carries a token opening at its foot far too small to use, so the dead went in from the far end and the front was a place for the living to stand.
Which Arzachena site is the best?
La Prisgiona, because it is not only a tower but a whole bronze age village, with the low walls of around a hundred huts around its base and a well that still holds water. Coddu Ecchju is the best of the tombs for its central slab, and Li Lolghi for its position on the ridge.
How long does it take to visit the nuraghi near Arzachena?
Allow twenty to thirty minutes at each, plus ten minutes’ driving between them, so three sites make a comfortable three-hour morning. Go at opening. These are exposed hilltop and hillside sites with nothing at all to stand under once the sun is properly up.
Read also: The Best Day Trips from the Costa Smeralda | A Costa Smeralda Itinerary: 3 to 5 Days | The Complete Guide to the Costa Smeralda
