Asinara: where white horses run free in a former maximum-security prison

Asinara isn't reached like a normal island. You don't take a regular ferry, you don't sit at the harbour bar, you don't book a room. Until 1997 it was one of Italy's most severe penitentiary facilities — Totò Riina and other Cosa Nostra bosses were held here during the emergencies of the 1990s — and today, now a national park, it still retains that suspended, otherworldly quality that certain places acquire when they have guarded secrets.

The albino horses and wildlife

The most surprising element of Asinara is the horses. Small, white or near-white — a local variety of the native Sardinian breed — they graze freely across the entire island alongside wild boars, mouflon, donkeys (hence the name), and a colony of griffon vultures reintroduced in recent years. The absence of permanent human settlements after the prison's closure has turned the island into a natural laboratory: vegetation has returned, the sea floors are among the richest in the western Mediterranean, and Eleonora's falcon nests on the northern cliffs.

The prison structures and their history

The island was established as an agricultural penal colony in 1885 and remained a prison for over a century. The structures — cells, surveillance offices, farm buildings — still stand, and some have been converted into visitor reception points. Visiting them with an authorised guide is a disorienting experience: the beauty of the landscape and the harshness of the history overlap in a way that's emotionally difficult to process.

How to visit

Access is regulated by the Park Authority: you must book a guided excursion departing from Porto Torres or Stintino (a twenty-to-thirty-minute crossing). Organised tours by 4x4, boat, or bicycle range from 30 to 60 euros per person depending on the type. Overnight stays on the island are possible only in a facility affiliated with the park, open only during certain periods. The best season is spring (April–May) and early autumn: the climate is mild, vegetation is lush, and the summer tourist crowds are absent. It is one of the most remarkable and least known places in all of Italy.