Olbia Discovery Guide

Olbia is how most people arrive in northern Sardinia — the busiest summer airport on the island and the main ferry port — and almost all of them drive straight out again to the Costa Smeralda.

The friction is that Olbia has a reputation as a transit town and does little to argue with it. It is not picturesque, it was bombed in 1943, and its best buildings are scattered through an ordinary modern street plan.

Two reasons to stop. The Romanesque basilica of San Simplicio is the finest medieval church in the north of the island, and the archaeological museum holds Roman ships pulled out of the harbour mud. And Olbia is the cheapest possible base for a coast that is otherwise among the most expensive in Italy: Tavolara, the Maddalena islands and the granite coves are all within an hour.

San Simplicio

Granite Romanesque, austere and heavy, and empty most of the time. Twenty minutes, and the best thing in the town.

The Roman ships

In the archaeological museum: hulls pulled out of the harbour mud, some of them apparently sunk deliberately during a raid.

Tavolara

Take the boat. The island has a handful of residents, a beach, a couple of restaurants and a family that has historically styled itself royal — and the cliff above is extraordinary from the water.

The Maddalena

A full day by boat among granite islands and sand, and Caprera, where Garibaldi lived and is buried.

Drive the granite coast

North through the Costa Smeralda to Porto Cervo, less to admire the resorts than to see what a designed coastline looks like.

Go inland

Into Gallura for cork forests, granite stazzi and Vermentino, which almost no visitor does.

Olbia is a working town that lives next door to extreme wealth and is entirely clear-eyed about the arrangement.

It has a port, an airport, a hospital, shipyards and a growing population — one of the few places in Sardinia that is gaining people rather than losing them. It is also where the staff of the Costa Smeralda live, and the seasonal economy of the coast runs on labour based here.

That produces a particular attitude: pragmatic about tourism, unsentimental about the resorts, and slightly impatient with a reputation as a place to pass through. Locals will point out that Olbia is older than almost anything on the coast it serves.

Gallurese identity is strong and distinct from southern Sardinian identity, with its own speech, its own food and a long northward orientation towards Corsica.

Outside the season this is an ordinary, busy, unpretty provincial town, and in July it is the single busiest transit point on the island.

The pressures here are concentrated, seasonal and mostly on the coast rather than the town.

Do not take sand or pebbles. On this coast it is enforced seriously — fines are substantial and bags are checked at the airport — because the white granite sand of the famous beaches was being measurably removed.

Several of the best beaches now cap daily visitor numbers and require booking. Check before driving out, and treat the caps as the conservation measures they are rather than an obstacle.

The Maddalena and Tavolara are protected marine areas with zoned anchoring rules. Posidonia meadows are damaged by anchors dropped on them, and the damage takes decades to undo.

Water is scarce in summer on a coast whose population multiplies for ten weeks.

Staying in Olbia rather than on the Costa Smeralda spreads money into a year-round town instead of a seasonal one, and costs a great deal less.

Come in June or September. The sea is as good and the load is not.

May, June and September are the best months: warm, swimmable, everything open and nothing like August prices.

July and August are the season, and on the Costa Smeralda the most expensive weeks in Italy. Ferries, flights and hotels all need booking well ahead.

Mid-May brings the feast of San Simplicio, the town's own occasion rather than a coastal one.

October is warm, quiet and green, with the sea still usable early in the month and most coastal businesses starting to close.

November to March is mild, cheap and very quiet. Olbia itself keeps working — it is a real town with a port and an airport — but the resorts are shut.

What a visitor actually pays in Olbia

Olbia is the arbitrage. Staying in the town and driving out costs a fraction of staying on the coast, and the beaches are the same beaches. The luxury tier here is not comparable to anywhere else in this set: the Costa Smeralda in August is among the most expensive places in Europe, and that is the point of it.