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Discovering
the Island
The first scratch map of Sardinia, you will discover 40 attractions of the Island. Each of them will make you know more local elements.
Asinara is the island that lies at the north-western end of Sardinia.
With its 50.9 square kilometers it is the third largest island in Sardinia, after those of Sant'Antioco and San Pietro.
The island is mainly hilly. The highest peak, Punta della Scomunica, reaches a height of 408 meters above sea level. The western side consists of a jagged coastline, high and with steep cliffs, while the eastern side is low and sandy, with scattered beaches and emerging rocks.
The island has been inhabited continuously since Neolithic times (4th century BC). A "Domus de Janas", in the area of Campu Perdu, dates back to that period. Here a small nuragic bronze representing a bovine animal has also been found, which today is preserved in the Antiquarium Turritano in Porto Torres.
There are signs of settlements even from medieval times, such as the Castellaccio, built by the Ligurian Malaspina family and which, according to legend, was also inhabited by the corsair Barbarossa, and the Camaldolese monastery of Sant'Andrea dating back to 1100.
In 1600 a community of shepherds and fishermen came to settle on the island and was forced to abandon it in 1885, when the State decided to build an agricultural colony and a lazaret in Asinara to confine the carriers of contagious diseases.
A part of the families living on the island until then, after a vain resistance and forced eviction, settled right in front of Asinara, founding the village of Stintino.
From the beginning of the First World War the island became a place of deportation of Austro-Hungarian prisoners. At the request of the Austrian government, an ossuary was built in 1936 to contain the remains of about 7000 prisoners. Around that time the Ethiopian prisoners of the Abyssinian War also began to arrive on the island.
Since the '60s was established in Asinara the Maximum Security Prison, famous for having hosted brigatists, bandits, kidnappers and big mafia bosses of the caliber of Raffaele Cutolo and Totò Riina.
The super prison was closed definitively in 1999, immediately after the birth of the Asinara National Park (1997).
In the mid-1980s it was in the small village of Cala d'Oliva, a small group of low and white houses destined for the commander of the penal colony and the families of the guards, that, for security reasons, the anti-mafia pool led by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino met, 4 months before the maxiprocess that would condemn the Sicilian bosses.
The island of Asinara has been closed to the public for over a century, and this has made it possible to preserve a large part of the natural environment and the beaches, about 700 species of fauna and over 80 species of animals, including the famous small white donkeys, which today are the symbol of Asinara (although the name of the island has nothing to do with the animal, as is widely believed, but derives from the Sumerian Akkadian name of the god Sin).
Today it is possible to visit the island and venture on excursions on foot, by bike and on horseback, and also to rent off-road vehicles
