Route 4 · one day
Kilometres of beach inside the city, sixteen hundred hectares of lagoons with flamingos, and a headland that runs from a Punic temple to wartime bunkers.
This is not a day out of town: the Poetto is inside Cagliari, you get there by bus from the centre, and behind it lies a wetland of international importance where flamingos nest in their thousands. It is the thing that most surprises people arriving here for the first time.
It is the route for a full day, and the only one you cannot walk from Via Mameli: you take a bus and come back for dinner.
On foot · CTM bus from the centre: lines PF and PQ all year, plus the seasonal ones
Pale sand and shallow water for tens of metres, an unbroken seafront you can walk or cycle, and the numbered “stops” that still carry the names of the old tram stations. It runs from the Sella del Diavolo to Quartu Sant’Elena: seven or eight kilometres, depending on which official source you read. The name is not Italian: it probably comes from the Catalan pohuet, “little well”, or from the Spanish puerto. They used to call it “the beach of a hundred thousand bathers”; the coloured huts that were once its trademark were removed in 1986.
On foot · On foot or by bike from the Poetto
Sixteen hundred hectares of fresh and salt water lagoons between Cagliari, Quartu, Selargius and Quartucciu, immediately behind the beach. Salt was taken from here for about two hundred and fifty years, with industrial production starting in 1830 and ending in 1985; since then it has become one of the richest bird areas in Sardinia, recognised as of international importance by the Ramsar Convention as early as 1977 and a regional park since 1999. The flamingos are here all year, but they nest in spring: in 2015 the park counted twenty-one thousand three hundred and twenty-six nesting pairs, the highest number ever recorded in Sardinia. You can visit on foot, by bike, by electric bus or by boat along the canals, and there are hides for birdwatching.
On foot · From Calamosca, about an hour’s walk
The limestone headland that closes the Poetto beach to the east, looking out over the Golfo degli Angeli. The history and nature trail starts from viale Calamosca, is freely accessible and marked with green dots; along the way you come across a Punic temple to Astarte, Punic and Roman cisterns, the remains of an eleventh-century monastic church, the Spanish tower and military structures from the twentieth century. Peregrine falcon and Barbary partridge fly overhead. The name comes from a legend: in the clash between the angels of St Michael and the devils, Lucifer lost his saddle, which fell and hardened into this headland. The gulf takes its name from the same battle.
On foot · Along the Sella trail
It stands at the top of the Sella, ninety-one metres above the sea, and dates from 1597: its job was to keep watch and defend the salt pans, which were the wealth of the city at the time. It was a truncated cone with a domed vault; today it is divided into two sections. From up there you can see the other coastal towers of the gulf, as far as Mezza Spiaggia and the Isola dei Cavoli. Further along the headland is the Torre di Sant’Elia, which the Pisans built in 1282 and which served as lighthouse and lookout at once: two tower keepers used fires to signal the arrival of enemy ships.
The CTM lines to the Poetto change between the winter and summer timetables: look at the site before you set off. The insides of the two towers do not seem to be open with any regularity — usually you see them from outside, and they open during Monumenti Aperti. As for the flamingos, the number of pairs changes every year: the park publishes the figures on its own site.
Morning in the park and on the trail, afternoon on the beach, and back into town for dinner. From the Poetto to Via Mameli is twenty minutes by bus.
We don’t write the opening times and tickets ourselves: every stop links to the site of whoever keeps it open. They change, and theirs is the right source.
Halfway round
140 Grammi is at Via Mameli 91, in Stampace, below Castello: this walk starts here and comes back here. If you want the table ready, book. On Wednesdays the Carbonara is half price.
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