Asinara Island in Sardinia: the natural treasure with a unique history and wild beauty

Asinara has been many things: a home, a lazaretto, a prison. Today it is a national park with a wild appearance, where the tourist organization is still being defined, but whose undeniable beauty attracts many visitors every year. Its windswept landscapes conquer, with their apparently uncontaminated appearance, its curious fauna, composed of mouflons and white donkeys, and obviously its beaches, some considered protected areas.

Where is it , how to get there and what to do once you land on the island? Here is all the information you need to discover this naturalistic treasure of Sardinia .

The island of Asinara is located in the north-west of Sardinia and is part of the municipality of Porto Torres , in the province of Sassari. It is located in front of Capo di Punta Falcone and the nearby town of Stintino , to whose history it is strongly linked. The entire island became the Asinara National Park in 1997 and a Marine Protected Area in 2002.

To reach the island of Asinara you have two main options: take the ferry departing from the port of Porto Torres or Stintino. Alternatively, you can take a tour by sailing boat or dinghy and admire the island from the sea.

Asinara is a unique place not only from a natural point of view, but also from a historical one. Inhabited since the Neolithic , as some archaeological finds demonstrate, between 1700 and 1800 it was the home of several families who, at the height of the community, had as many as 300 inhabitants . Unfortunately, once it passed into the hands of the State at the end of 1800, the families were asked to leave the island which, once uninhabited, would be transformed into a health station for tuberculosis patients and an agricultural penal colony.

Jumping back in time, at the beginning of the First World War it became the ideal setting for the confinement of Austro-Hungarian prisoners , in the 1930s, following the Ethiopian War, it was the turn of Ethiopian deportees, while in the 1960s the most well-known phase began: that of the maximum security prison . Here, Red Brigade members, terrorists and mafiosi were locked up, including Raffaele Cutolo and Salvatore Riina .

Several buildings that you will encounter during your visit to the island bear witness to its history. Those of Cala Reale were once a penal colony, a lazaretto, a hospital and a quarantine station, today they are the headquarters of the Asinara National Park management body and tourist services. Nearby there is also the church and the Austro-Hungarian chapel: an ossuary located in the direction of Campu Perdu is also dedicated to them.

Finally, although there were different prisons, located in different parts of the island, the area that can currently be visited is the one near the former Central Branch of Cala d'Oliva, where the Observatory of Memory is located, a small exhibition route that illustrates some aspects of life in the penal colony.

Among future projects, there is talk of making the Cala d'Oliva structure an integral part of a museum circuit that promotes legality.

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