5 Days in Cagliari

The Cittadella dei Musei occupies the old Royal Arsenal at the top of Castello, and its main draw is the National Archaeological Museum. The ground floor runs in order from the Neolithic through the Nuragic civilization, with its bronze statuettes, to the Phoenician, Punic and Roman rooms. The floors above are arranged by site, with whole sections for Su Nuraxi, the Sanctuary of Antas and the Phoenician cities of Sulci and Monte Sirai.

Many guides are out of date here. The Giants of Mont'e Prama, the stone warriors, archers and boxers from a Nuragic necropolis near Cabras, used to be the headline here. Since April 2026 the 25 restored statues have stood together at the museum in Cabras, as a temporary display with a permanent hall planned for next year, and they are in the "more time" section. Cagliari is now the place to understand the Nuragic world before you meet it in Barumini or Nora. The Pinacoteca Nazionale next door shares the ticket and has Sardinian altarpieces.

A short walk brings you to the square where Castello shows its age. The Cathedral of Santa Maria is a 13th-century Pisan church in many costumes: a Baroque façade went up in 1699-1709, was torn down in the 20th century by people hoping to find a Pisan one underneath, found nothing, and the Romanesque-style front you see was built in 1933. The bell tower is original, and the pulpit was carved in 1159-62 for the cathedral of Pisa and later given to Cagliari. Go down into the crypt, and look for the marble tomb of Martin the Younger.

Next door the Royal Palace was the seat of the Spanish viceroys from 1337, and the Savoy royal family lived here from 1799 to 1815 after Napoleon occupied Turin. It's open daily and cheap, and the staircase and frescoed council room are the reason to go in. If you only have time for one, pick the cathedral.

Down in Marina, the old port quarter, Via Sardegna and Via Napoli are where Cagliari's trattorias bunch up. Order what the coast does best: fregula cun còciula, the pasta pearls cooked with clams, spaghetti with clams and bottarga, or fried small fish. Lillicu, at Via Sardegna 78, is a long-running favorite that locals date to 1938, with no printed menu and a waiter who recites what came in off the boats.

Climb back into Castello through its southwest gate, the Torre dell'Elefante. The Pisans built it in 1306-07, and its twin the Torre di San Pancrazio at the north end of the hill in 1305, both in white limestone to a design by the Sardinian architect Giovanni Capula. By 1535 the emperor Charles V counted them among the best military works in Europe. The small marble elephant on the wall is thought to symbolize Pisan sea power, and the tower later served as a powder store and a prison.

The interior can be climbed on a ticket when it is open, but the city's page currently shows it as temporarily closed and the San Pancrazio tower is not a sure thing either, so treat the outside as the sight. Then walk a minute to the Bastione di Santa Croce, a terrace in the old Jewish quarter, the Giudaria. When the Catholic monarchs expelled the Jews who refused conversion in 1492, the synagogue here became the church of the Holy Cross.

The terrace on the Bastione di Saint Remy is the city's balcony, and it's younger than it looks. Giuseppe Costa and Fulgenzio Setti designed it in 1896 and it opened in 1902, in white and yellow limestone with Corinthian columns. The double stairway and triumphal arch were badly bombed in 1943 and rebuilt exactly as they had been. The gallery underneath, the Passeggiata Coperta, has been a banquet hall, a wartime shelter and, in 1949, the first Sardinian trade fair.

Climb the steps from Piazza Costituzione, or take the lift, and look out over the port and the rooftops of Villanova. The whole city comes up around sunset, so claim a stretch of balustrade.

At the foot of the bastion, on Piazza Costituzione, the Antico Caffè dates its history to 1855. It has a Liberty-style interior, once a haunt of writers, and serves breakfast in the morning and an aperitivo in the evening. Have a Vermentino or a Cannonau with the snacks that come with it.

It's the right end to a day of hills.

Bonaria is a hill south of the port with a story that reaches Argentina. The Catalans built a fortified camp and a chapel here in 1324-26 while they were besieging the Pisans up in Castello, and a wooden statue of the Virgin, so the legend goes, washed ashore at the foot of the hill after being thrown off a Spanish ship. The sanctuary of Our Lady of Bonaria grew around it, the big basilica beside it was only finished in the early 20th century, and Spanish sailors named Buenos Aires after the Virgin. Three popes have visited for that link: John Paul II in 1985, Benedict XVI in 2008 and Francis in 2013.

Go in for the votive paintings and ship models in the sanctuary museum, and walk the steps for the view of the port.

The city's covered market in San Benedetto is closed for a large rebuilding project paid for from the EU recovery money. It shut in March 2025, and the stalls trade in a temporary market in Piazza Nazzari, a few hundred meters away. The fish counters are the point, with the red prawns, sea bream and sea urchins of the season, and next to them the sharp aged pecorino sardo, pane carasau flatbread, saffron and bottarga di muggine, the cured mullet roe that goes on spaghetti.

Go early for the pick of the fish, buy a piece of pecorino and some bread, and have a coffee in one of the bars around the market. The I Fenu ice cream parlor, a Gambero Rosso three-cone address, is in the same neighborhood.

The university's Orto Botanico opened in 1866 and holds about 2,000 species in three sections: Mediterranean plants, succulents and a palm collection of about 4,000 square meters. Roman cisterns and wells are built into the garden.

Go straight after lunch, since the last entry is an hour before closing.

Cagliari's amphitheatre is the most important building left from Roman Karalis, and its builders cut it out of the limestone hill between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The tiers of seats, the arena, the corridors and the cages for wild animals were all carved from the bedrock, with room for around 10,000 spectators watching beast hunts, gladiator fights and executions. Locals call it Is centu scalas, "the hundred steps".

It is under long restoration, so you can't walk into the arena or the underground areas, but an 80-meter walkway gives a close view.

Ten minutes west of the amphitheatre, the hill of Tuvixeddu holds the largest Punic necropolis still in existence, the one visible trace of the Phoenician-Punic city of Karaly. Its builders dug deep shaft tombs into the limestone between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC, and the Romans later added burial chambers at the foot of the hill. A few painted tombs of North African style survive, with lotus and palm friezes, and the Tomb of the Uraeus has a winged cobra.

It is now a park with paths and a viewpoint at the top, open from early morning to late evening,. Come as the light gets low.

Walk down to the harbor for the passeggiata, the evening stroll that Italian cities still do properly. Via Roma runs along the water under an arcade of eclectic façades, with the white marble Palazzo Civico (1907, rebuilt after the bombing in 1946-53) in the middle, a legacy of mayor Ottone Bacaredda's push to make Cagliari a modern port.

Then make a loop through the lanes behind the arcade, and end on the port side with a gelato or an aperitivo to watch the ferries and the lights.

Villanova, the quarter east of Castello, was where the peasants lived while the nobles lived up the hill, and it is still more residential and less polished than Marina. The streets around Via Eleonora d'Arborea and Via Oristano have small osterias and pizzerias.

Eat malloreddus with sausage ragù, or culurgiones if they have them, and ask for a bottle of Cannonau or the light local Nuragus.

The Molentargius-Saline Regional Park covers about 1,600 hectares of shallow ponds and former salt pans between Cagliari and Quartu Sant'Elena, right behind the Poetto. It became a protected wetland under the Ramsar Convention in 1977 and a regional park in 1999, and it takes its name from the molentargius, the men who led the donkeys (su molenti) loaded with salt. The salt works closed in 1985, and the birds stayed.

The symbol of the place is the pink flamingo, sa genti arrubia, "the red people". They live here all year round, mostly in the Bellarosa Maggiore pond, where there is a bird hide on the embankment. Look for herons, little egrets, black-winged stilts and avocets too. Walk or hire a bike for the flat paths, and bring binoculars.

Poetto is an 8-km strip of sand between the Sella del Diavolo and the Margine Rosso in Quartu, nicknamed the beach of the hundred thousand. The name comes from the Catalan for "little well". Cagliari barely used it until the end of the 1800s, when the white dunes, the old beach huts (casotti) and the first bathing clubs arrived. The French landed here in 1793 in an attempt to take the city.

Be honest about the sand: a nourishment project in 2002 dredged sand from a few hundred meters offshore instead of from far out as planned, and the new beach is coarser and greyer, with shell fragments, than the old white one. It is still a good city beach, with free stretches and club sections that have showers and toilets. The sea is best for swimming from June to early October, and by November it is too cold for most people.

The beach has wooden kiosk bars, the baretti, where Cagliari eats and drinks in summer and on any sunny day in winter. They sell sandwiches, fried fish, salads and spritzes, and stay open through the afternoon when restaurants shut.

Choose a table facing the sea, order fried calamari and a cold Ichnusa, and stay a while.

At the west end of the Poetto, the Sella del Diavolo, the "Devil's Saddle", is a limestone promontory 135 meters high that closes the beach and leans over Marina Piccola, Cagliari's small harbor. Beyond it, around the cliffs, are the little Cala Fighera bay and the small beach of Calamosca, close to the Sant'Elia district.

Calamosca is the better place for a short swim in the shoulder season, and the walk from Marina Piccola gives you the cliffs from below and a look back along the bay.

Finish at Marina Piccola, the harbor tucked under the Devil's Saddle, with a view along the beach and out across the Gulf of Angels. Sunset is around 17:30 in late October, and the promenade fills with walkers and a few brave swimmers in the last light.

This is a good evening to try a mirto, the Sardinian myrtle liqueur, served ice-cold, before the bus back and dinner in Marina or Villanova.

Nora is an ancient city on a headland about 40 km southwest of Cagliari, with the sea on three sides. Phoenicians founded it on a Nuragic site, and it was probably the island's main city when the Romans took Sardinia in 238 BC. What you see is mostly Roman: a forum, a theatre, baths with mosaics, houses and the temple of Eshmun-Aesculapius. The tophet, the sanctuary with the small stelae, was found in 1889 after a storm, and a stele from the 8th century BC carries the oldest known written form of the name Sardinia.

The path runs through the ruins and along the water, with 28 panels that link by QR code to 3D images and audio. The small church of Sant'Efisio, built in 1089, stands nearby, and each 1 May the Sant'Efisio procession comes here on foot from Cagliari, as it has since 1657.

Pula is the town at the foot of the headland, about 3 km from Nora, and the place to eat on this day. Look for a restaurant on or near Corso Vittorio Emanuele and order pasta with clams or grilled fish with a glass of Vermentino.

The Museo Giovanni Patroni in the center shows finds from Nora, with a cheaper combined ticket. If you'd rather save the time for the sand, skip it.

Chia is the last stretch of the SS195, about 56 km from Cagliari, and the beaches begin here. Su Giudeu is a kilometer of fine sand with dunes up to about 20 meters, a lagoon behind them and a small rocky islet offshore. A wooden walkway crosses the dunes from the car park, and the dunes are fragile, so stay on it. Cala Cipolla, a smaller cove with pines and juniper behind it and a kiosk bar about 400 meters from the car park, is the quieter option.

Chia also has a Spanish tower from 1578 on the promontory where the acropolis of the ancient town of Bithia stood. It is 13 meters high, and the view of the dunes from it is worth the short walk. The ARST bus stops at Baia Chia, a short walk from the Su Giudeu path, with around ten departures a day from Cagliari on weekdays and five on Sunday.

A short drive beyond Chia, along the coast road to Teulada, Tuerredda is the beach from the photographs: a crescent of very fine white sand, a sheltered bay and a small islet you can reach with a short swim. The water goes from turquoise to deep blue, there are Posidonia meadows for snorkelers, and the deep inlet gives some protection from the mistral.

That fame is the problem. The Teulada council counts a daily maximum of 1,100 people, and in summer 2025 it ran an online reservation system for the high season, at 1-2 EUR per person. Press reports say booking continued in summer 2026. Parking is paid and limited, so go early, or come late in the afternoon when the day-trippers leave.

Capo Carbonara is the headland that closes the eastern end of the Gulf of Cagliari, about 3.5 km long, and it forms part of a marine protected area together with the islands of Cavoli and Serpentara. On the eastern side Porto Giunco is the beach everyone comes for: white dunes running down to clear, pale-blue water, with the Stagno di Notteri behind it, a lagoon where pink flamingos feed.

On a windless day the sea is flat as glass here and at neighboring Simius, and the mistral can change the whole picture, so look at the forecast. The sea is still swimmable into October. Walk to the edge of the pond for the birds, but keep to the paths.

A path from the beach runs up through the Mediterranean scrub to the Spanish watchtower on the headland, probably built in 1578. It's a 9-meter truncated cone of local granite, about 50 meters above the sea, one of the medium-size towers of the Spanish coastal defense, and it looks straight down on the beach and the pond.

This is the best viewpoint of the day, so do it in the morning light, before lunch and the heat.

Villasimius is a village of fewer than 4,000 people, called Carbonara until 1862, when it took its present name from Simius, the old hamlet. Eat fish: the grilled catch of the day or spaghetti with sea urchin, and a glass of cold Vermentino. If you came by bus, it drops you at Via Roma near La Lanterna.

Punta Molentis is the beach on this coast that regulars put first: a small bay enclosed by granite blocks, pale coarse sand that glitters in the sun and shallow water that goes from green to blue within a few meters. The rocky sides drop off quickly and are good for snorkeling, and the sandy middle suits children.

It also has the tightest rules. In high season you book a parking space and pay online on the Villasimius portal, and without one you can't go down. The limit was 600 people in 2025, and press reports for summer 2026 (a mayoral order of 5 June) gave about 150 bathers and 70 cars at 10 EUR, so check the portal. There is little shade since the 2021 fire. If it is full, Cala Caterina and Simius are about ten minutes away.

Cala Caterina is a small cove on the west side of the Capo Carbonara headland. The Fortezza Vecchia, a 14th-century fort rebuilt in the 16th century against pirates, stands a few minutes away on the same shore.

It's the easy alternative when Punta Molentis is full, and a calm place for a last swim before the drive back, about an hour, which in November you want to start before dark.