Alghero Discovery Guide
Why Visit Alghero the Smart Way
Alghero is a walled Catalan town on the north-west coast of Sardinia. That is not a figure of speech: the language spoken here is a variety of Catalan, the street signs are bilingual, and the town has been culturally closer to Barcelona than to Rome since the fourteenth century.
The friction is that it is also the island's package-holiday capital, with an airport full of low-cost flights and a summer season to match. In August the old town is busy and the prices are not local ones.
Go either side of that. The walls, the coral, the Catalan and the limestone cliffs at Capo Caccia are all there in May or October with a fraction of the people, and the northwest coast is the best stretch of Italy most visitors have never considered.
How to Experience Alghero
Walk the walls at sunset
The bastions face west over open sea, which is an accident of geography Alghero has made the most of. This is the town's one unmissable half hour.
Listen for the Catalan
Read the street signs, and listen in the market and the older bars. It is not a performance for visitors and it is not always easy to catch.
Capo Caccia
Either the boat from the port or the Escala del Cabirol, a stairway of several hundred steps cut down the cliff face. The boat is easier; the stairs are the better arrival.
A nuraghe
Palmavera, ten minutes out of town, for a village of the Bronze Age civilisation that built nothing like it anywhere else in Europe.
Eat the lobster once
Aragosta alla catalana, cold, with tomato and onion. Ask the price first.
The beaches north
Maria Pia and Le Bombarde, backed by pines, and the long sheltered water of Porto Conte beyond.
Where to Find Authentic Cultural and Historical Character
Alghero holds two identities at once and is comfortable with both.
It is a Catalan town, and it makes rather a lot of this — the bilingual signage, the twinning with Catalan cities, the name l'Alguer on the tourist material. Some of that is heritage promotion. Underneath it, though, the language is real, the food is genuinely different from the rest of Sardinia, and the older generation grew up speaking Catalan at home.
It is also, since the 1960s, a resort with an airport, and in high summer it behaves like one. The contrast between August and February is greater here than anywhere else on the island: a full, loud, expensive town and a quiet provincial one, four months apart.
The working town is still there behind it — a fishing fleet, a coral trade, agriculture on the Nurra, and a large population living outside the walls who have little to do with the visitors.
Sardinian identity sits alongside the Catalan one rather than against it. People here are Sardinian, Catalan-speaking and Italian, in roughly that order.
Travel Profile
- Local Name(s) L'Alguer
- Best Known For The only Catalan-speaking town in Italy • Aragonese sea walls and bastions • Red coral, and the Riviera del Corallo • Capo Caccia and Neptune's Grotto
- Travel Styles Beach holidays • Cultural tourism • Food and drink • Diving and snorkelling • Sailing • Architecture
- Travel Environments Coast • Beaches • Historic cities
- Getting Around Alghero-Fertilia airport is ten kilometres out and has long been a low-cost base, with a wide European network in summer and a thin one in winter; buses reach Sassari in under an hour and Porto Torres for ferries to Genoa; the walled town is flat and almost entirely pedestrian, and a car is needed for Capo Caccia, the nuraghi and the coast road north
Responsible Travel Tips
Alghero concentrates a lot of pressure into a short season on a fragile coast.
Do not buy coral casually. Corallium rubrum grows a few millimetres a year, the Mediterranean population has been heavily over-fished, and harvesting is licensed and limited for good reason. If you buy, buy from a workshop that can tell you where it came from, and understand that cheap coral is usually neither local nor legal.
Do not take sand or pebbles. Removing them from Sardinian beaches carries real fines and is checked at the airport.
At Capo Caccia, the griffon vulture colony is one of Italy's last. Keep to paths and viewpoints and do not approach the cliffs where they nest.
In Neptune's Grotto, do not touch the formations; the cave takes a very large number of visitors and the damage accumulates.
Come outside August if you can. The town, the beaches, the boats and the water supply are all sized for a smaller number of people than they get in high summer.
When to Visit Alghero
May, June, September and early October are the best months: warm, bright, swimmable and without the August crowds or prices.
July and August are the season. The old town is full, the beaches are busy and accommodation is at its dearest; the compensation is that everything is open and the evenings are long.
Holy Week brings the Spanish-form processions, which are the most distinctive thing in the Alghero calendar.
Autumn is the grape harvest on the Nurra plain behind the town, and the sea is at its warmest in September.
November to March is quiet, green and cheap, with many coastal businesses closed but the walled town still working. The maestrale is at its strongest.
Travel Cost Levels in Alghero
What a visitor actually pays in Alghero
Alghero is the most expensive of the Sardinian anchors and considerably dearer than Cagliari, because it is a resort and Cagliari is not. The August premium is steep and the shoulder-season drop is correspondingly large. Lobster is priced by weight and will surprise people who do not ask first.