Sardinia off the beaten track: inland villages and lesser-known destinations

Anyone who knows Sardinia only for the Costa Smeralda has seen just one island: the one of July and August, where prices climb and the coves fill up. Sardinia off the tourist trail is another thing entirely, and it begins as soon as you move thirty kilometres away from the sea. It's called the interior: Barbagia, Ogliastra, Logudoro, Sinis, Marmilla. Here the nuraghi outnumber the beach umbrellas, the villages live on sheep-farming and cantu a tenore singing, and in summer it cools down in the evening. This guide gathers the inland destinations worth planning when you want to understand the island, not just get a tan.

The Supramonte

We start from the heart of stone. In the Supramonte, between Oliena and Dorgali, hides Tiscali, a Nuragic village built inside a doline, a karst sinkhole reached only on foot with a good hour of walking. The huts sit within the mountain, sheltered from sun and rain: for centuries they were an almost invisible refuge. It's the hike that explains, better than any other, why the Sardinians looked inland and not to the coast.

Staying among the mountains, Lula and Monte Albo are mineral Sardinia par excellence: a brilliant white limestone massif that dominates the Nuoro area, villages where the sea is only a distant echo. Further south, in Barbagia, Gavoi is the right place to slow down for real: fiore sardo (a semi-cooked pecorino) is aged here, Lake Gusana is a stone's throw away, and at winter's end the village fills up for the L'Isola delle Storie literary festival. It's the Barbagia you live, not the one on the postcard.

To the east, in Ogliastra, Ulassai brings together two souls that rarely meet. On one hand the tacchi, the imposing limestone towers that have made the village one of the European capitals of sport climbing, with the Su Marmuri cave and the Lequarci waterfalls just outside town. On the other, art: Ulassai is the home of Maria Lai, and the Stazione dell'Arte, set up in the old railway station, guards her works, while through the streets lingers the memory of "Legarsi alla montagna", the collective performance of 1981.

Necropolises in the rock

Then there is the Sardinia that carves the rock for the dead and for the gods. The Domus de Janas of Montessu, in the Sulcis, are a pre-Nuragic necropolis laid out in a natural amphitheatre: dozens of hypogeal tombs that popular tradition attributed to the janas, the Sardinian fairy-witches. In the Logudoro, above Bonorva, Sant'Andrea Priu tells five thousand years in one go: tombs cut into the basalt and later turned into a rock-cut church, with Byzantine frescoes still legible.

The Nuragic vein is inexhaustible. In the Oristano area, on the plateau of Abbasanta, the Nuraghe Losa is one of the most imposing on the island: a keep of black basalt covered in lichen, with corridors and perfectly preserved tholos chambers. Not far off, at Paulilatino, the Sacred Well of Santa Cristina is the hydraulic masterpiece of Nuragic civilisation: a staircase that descends underground to the water, with ashlars cut to interlock with a precision that still leaves you speechless today. For grand-scale archaeology there is of course also Barumini with its Su Nuraxi, a UNESCO site, which is well worth a visit near the Giara di Gesturi and its wild ponies.

The Romanesque

The Romanesque, too, flourished far from the cities. Out in open country, in the Logudoro, the cathedral of Saccargia rises in black and white stripes of basalt and limestone, isolated among the fields, with a cycle of frescoes in the apse. On the same plateau, San Pietro di Sorres repeats the two-tone play of the stone in an abbey still inhabited by Benedictine monks: two churches that on their own are worth an itinerary in the north of the island.

Finally, where the interior brushes the sea again yet stays free of crowds, there is Tharros, the Phoenician-Roman city on the Sinis peninsula: columns, baths and paved streets sheer above the water, in an area where the white quartz beaches of Is Arutas remain far quieter than those of the north-east.

Practical tips

A practical tip: for the interior avoid the peak of summer and aim for May-June or September-October, when Barbagia holds "Autunno in Barbagia" and the villages open their courtyards to crafts and cooking. With a car and a few extra days, the Sardinia off the beaten track gives you back a whole island that most tourists never see.

Practical guides for Todi

• Where to stay in Todi
• What to see in Todi in 2 days
• Where to eat in Todi
• How to get to Todi