Alghero

Alghero takes two to three days, four with day trips, and it suits visitors with good knees and a taste for Catalan cooking. The sea walls, the cathedral bell tower and Neptune's Grotto carry the visit, and the grotto alone asks for 654 steps if you go by land. A Catalan town on Sardinia sounds like a misprint, but the Catalans took Alghero in 1354 and settled families from Valencia, Majorca and Aragon here, and the street names and the local dialect still show it.

The airport is 10 km from the centre, and the ARST bus covers the distance in 20–30 min for €1, calling at Fertilia on the way. The stop is about a hundred metres from the arrivals exit, and a ticket from the machine in the terminal costs less than one bought on board. A taxi takes about 15 minutes and costs about €20. The old town is a restricted traffic zone and needs no car, though the necropolis at Anghelu Ruju has no public bus.

Walk the old town from the harbour. The sea walls come first, mostly 16th-century work with seven towers and three forts. Sunset is best watched from there. Next is the cathedral, whose octagonal bell tower with a polychrome majolica spire is the emblem of the town, begun in 1530 and consecrated in 1593. It keeps two closed days: Wednesday and Sunday. San Francesco comes after it, with a square cloister whose octagonal pillars alternate with columns. Entry is €3 (cloister). Then comes a focaccia on Via Garibaldi, and the Catalan thread runs through all of it, from the Algherese dialect, recognised as a minority language in 1997, to the street names.

Neptune's Grotto lies under the cliffs of Capo Caccia, and there are two ways in. By land you leave the car at the top and descend 654 steps cut into the rock in 1954 to a cave mouth about a metre above the sea. By boat from the harbour the trip takes about 40 minutes each way, and the fare is paid separately. Entry to the cave is €18, a guided tour leaves every full hour, and by land a time slot is compulsory. Let the knees decide. The boat is kinder to them, and the stairs come with a shuttle and a car park. Le Bombarde and Lazzaretto, two beaches on the same road, make a good end to the day.

Beyond the town the prehistoric sites sit on the plateau to the north. Anghelu Ruju has 38 tombs cut into sandstone between 3200 and 2800 BC, and it joined the UNESCO list in 2025 as part of the series on the domus de janas. Palmavera, a Bronze Age village near Porto Conte, is the other stop, and the Sella & Mosca winery shares the plateau with Anghelu Ruju. Fertilia, Stintino, Sassari and Bosa each make a day of their own, and the guides to day trips and to the quieter sites cover them.