Martin Morrell
This is about Italy’s secret coast—the other Sardinia. Not the Sardinia of the Aga Khan, yachts, celebrities, oligarchs, and tycoons. Not, in other words, Porto Rotondo, where Italy’s Caviar Left came every summer to populate a brand-new colony built to its high-flying specifications. That vociferous, in-your-face Sardinia reminds me of the film Swept Away, whose director, Lina Wertmüller, was inspired by my aunt, the designer Mariuccia Mandelli, who founded Krizia; her even more formidable sister Giancarla; and their court of influential intellectuals and entrepreneurs. Lying topless in the sun—it was part of the liberation of forceful women nurtured in a traditional society—they conducted lively conversations, mostly about politics, that anyone might have mistaken for fights and that resounded across the wild Mediterranean maquis.
But the Sardinia I go to now is the part of the island down by the capital, Cagliari, that is being sustainably and exquisitely developed by the Sardinians themselves. The southern and southeastern coast, from the pale blue waters of Cala Sinzias, reached through a thicket of eucalyptus, to Capo Teulada, has the same blue sea, and gorgeous maquis. In between is Pula’s long sandy coast, the tender archaeological site of Nora—what remains of a Roman and pre-Roman town—Villasimius’s granite rocks, 20 miles of white-sand beaches, the towns of Chia and Domus de Maria, Capo Carbonara’s protected marine area, and swimming among rocks in Tuerredda. The bays are no less dazzling, though there are far fewer yachts crowding their waters, and any construction, such as the hotel at Cala Caterina, is so well integrated into the landscape as to have become almost invisible. Sardinian cuisine is here, too—probably the subtlest Italy has to offer: I am thinking of lasagnette, thin sheets of pasta, over a clump of thin wild asparagus, and extraordinary pecorino. But most of all, what you see is the sea, beguiling and seductive, playing the lead in this unspoiled masterpiece of nature, the other side of Sardinia.
Restaurants
$ Less than $25
$$ $25 to $75
$$$ $75 to $150
$$$$ More than $150
