Asinara: The Prison Island of Sardinia Where Nature Has Won

Asinara is a long, narrow island off the north-western tip of Sardinia, in the gulf that bears its name. For nearly a century it was a penal colony — Italy's last island prison, closed in 1997. Since then it has been a national park, and nature has reclaimed a territory that humans had kept under control with walls and barbed wire.

You reach it by boat from Porto Torres or Stintino. Access is regulated: you can disembark only on organised visits or with special permits. This is the secret of its beauty: Asinara is never crowded, and every visitor is counted and accounted for.

The island is crossed by a dirt road that runs from south to north along 17 kilometres. You can travel it by bicycle, on foot, in a four-wheel drive with a guide, or by small tourist train. Along the way you encounter the structures of the penal colony — white buildings with iron bars, the infirmary, the isolation cells — which carry a sinister and melancholy fascination.

But the real spectacle is nature. Asinara is famous for its albino white donkeys — an endemic species that lives wild on the island and is encountered along the tracks, curious and gentle. The beaches are deserted and the sea is among the clearest in Sardinia: Cala d'Oliva, Cala Arena, Cala dei Detenuti — names that tell an ambiguous story of beauty and confinement.

The fauna is extraordinary: mouflons, wild boar, peregrine falcons, dolphins swimming along the coast. A century of near-zero human activity has created an almost unique habitat in the Mediterranean — a kind of natural laboratory where biodiversity flourishes.

The best time is spring and autumn, when visits are less frequent and the island is in full bloom. In summer excursions are more numerous but still subject to a quota.

Asinara is not a beach island — it is an island to walk, to explore, to understand. Its history of imprisonment and redemption, of human control and natural reconquest, makes it a unique place in the Mediterranean.