Alghero: Catalan Sardinia on the Northwest Coast

Alghero, on Sardinia’s northwest coast, is the one town in Italy where a form of Catalan is still part of everyday life. Since the Aragonese siege of 1354 it has looked as much towards Barcelona as towards Rome, and the evidence is everywhere in its old town: honey-coloured sea walls and towers, a cathedral with a tiled Catalan bell tower, a Gothic Franciscan cloister, and a long tradition of working the red coral fished off its shores. Beyond the walls lie the limestone cliffs of Capo Caccia, Neptune’s Grotto and some of the island’s finest prehistoric sites. This guide to Alghero, Sardinia, covers what to see and how to see it, and how the town fits into Day 18 of our small group tour of Malta, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica.

Why do people in Alghero speak Catalan?

People in Alghero speak Catalan because the town was resettled by Catalans after the Crown of Aragon took it in the fourteenth century. Alghero began as a fortified harbour of the Doria family of Genoa, traditionally dated to 1102. In 1353 an Aragonese fleet, allied with Venice, defeated the Genoese off the coast and the town surrendered, only to rise in revolt. King Peter IV of Aragon came in person to besiege it in 1354, and the peace he made that year with Mariano IV, ruler of the Sardinian kingdom of Arborea, left Alghero in Catalan hands.

Peter IV then expelled the Sardinian and Ligurian inhabitants and offered incentives to settlers from Catalonia and Valencia. Within a few years the town was a Catalan colony in the middle of a Sardinian-speaking countryside. The Emperor Charles V stayed here in 1541, on his way to his expedition against Algiers. Castilian later replaced Catalan as the language of government, and after Sardinia passed to the House of Savoy in 1720 Italian slowly took over, but the local speech, alguerès, survived in homes, songs and street names.

The Region of Sardinia recognised Algherese Catalan in 1997, and Italy listed Catalan among its protected historic minority languages under Law 482 of 1999. It is a living language, though a fragile one. A 2015 language survey found that about 30 per cent of residents could speak it fluently, while fewer than 4 per cent of the youngest parents used it as the main language with their children. You will see it on the old town’s street-name plaques, which give the Catalan name beside the Italian, and the town’s nickname, Barceloneta, says the rest. For the wider story of the island, from Cagliari in the south to this northern coast, see our Sardinia itinerary from Cagliari to Alghero.

The sea walls and towers of Alghero, Sardinia

Alghero’s defences were begun by the Genoese, enlarged in the late thirteenth century and kept by the Aragonese, who largely preserved the Genoese plan and its many towers. In the sixteenth century the walls were rebuilt again. The seaward side was completed; the landward circuit never quite was. In 1867 Alghero was struck off the list of Italy’s strategic fortresses and the dismantling of its landward walls began, which is why the old town now opens directly onto the newer streets to the east. Sardegna Turismo counts eight sixteenth-century towers still standing in the town.

Three of them anchor a first walk. The Torre di Porta Terra, once the Porta Reial, guarded the main land gate used by travellers arriving from Sassari. The Torre di San Giovanni stood midway along the landward wall. At the southern corner of the old town, the massive round Torre di Sulis, also called the Torre dello Sperone, takes its name from Vincenzo Sulis, a Cagliari tribune of the late eighteenth century who was condemned and held prisoner here for more than twenty years. On the harbour side, the Torre della Maddalena is also known as Garibaldi’s tower, after the hero of Italian unification passed through in 1855.

Can you walk along Alghero’s sea walls?

Yes: the seaward ramparts survive almost complete and their tops form a promenade around the western edge of the old town. The bastions carry the names of explorers, Marco Polo, Cristoforo Colombo, Pigafetta and Magellano, and the stretch along the Bastioni Marco Polo looks straight out over the bay towards Capo Caccia, which is where many people gather in the evening. The walk is mostly level, with steps and ramps where the walls change height, and it takes well under an hour at a gentle pace.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria and its bell tower

Alghero became the seat of a bishop in 1503 but had no cathedral to match, and work on one began in the sixteenth century. It was consecrated in 1593 while still unfinished, and the transept and dome were only vaulted in 1638. The result mixes a Catalan Gothic plan with late Renaissance building, all hidden behind a neoclassical portico added in the nineteenth century. Inside, look for the marble mausoleum of Maurizio of Savoy, Duke of Montferrat, made in 1807, and the five Gothic chapels around the apse.

Outside, look up at the bell tower: octagonal, Catalan Gothic and crowned by a pyramidal spire of coloured majolica tiles, best seen from the lanes behind the cathedral rather than from the portico.

San Francesco and its cloister

A few streets away, the church of San Francesco is often described as one of the finest examples of Catalan Gothic architecture in Sardinia. The Franciscan friars built it in the late fifteenth century; a collapse in 1593 brought down much of the nave and several chapels, and it was rebuilt by 1598 in the style of the day. What survives of the Gothic church is the star-vaulted presbytery and its side chapels, the first chapels by the entrance and, above all, the cloister.

The cloister is rectangular and on two levels, with 22 sandstone columns on the lower walk and a later colonnade above. It is one of the quietest places in the old town. The bell tower, square below and hexagonal above, has 64 steps to the top; whether it is open to climb varies, so ask at the church.

Red coral and the Riviera del Corallo

The stretch of coast around Alghero, roughly 90 kilometres long, is known as the Riviera del Corallo, and red coral (Corallium rubrum) is the town’s emblem. Alghero’s craftsmen have long set it in gold, and the jewellers of the old town still sell coral necklaces, earrings and carved pieces. Coral is now protected in parts of the Capo Caccia marine reserve, and if you are thinking of buying, ask the jeweller where and how the piece was sourced.

The Museo del Corallo tells the wider story. It occupies Villa Costantino, an Art Deco house of 1927 just outside the old walls, and its displays, renewed in 2016, cover coral’s biology, its trade and the work of local craftsmen.

Capo Caccia and Neptune’s Grotto

West of the town, the bay sweeps round to Capo Caccia, a headland of pale limestone that falls sheer into the sea about 24 kilometres from Alghero. It lies within the Porto Conte regional park, created in 1999, and the protected marine area of Capo Caccia and Isola Piana. At its foot, at sea level, is the Grotta di Nettuno, Neptune’s Grotto.

The official site for the grotto says no one knows for certain who first found it, but the likeliest candidate is a local fisherman (named in one tradition as Ferrandino) at the end of the eighteenth century. The cave system runs for about four kilometres, of which around one kilometre is open to visitors. The guided route passes stalactites and great flowstone columns beside the Lago La Marmora, a saltwater lake.

How do you reach Neptune’s Grotto from Alghero?

You can reach Neptune’s Grotto either by sea from Alghero’s harbour or by road to the top of the cliff and then on foot down the Escala del Cabirol. At the time of writing, boats run from the Alghero harbour and from Cala Dragunara in Porto Conte, passing the cliffs of Capo Caccia on the way, and the official site calls the boat the best option for older visitors; the boat ticket does not include entry to the cave. Visits are guided, start on the hour and last about half an hour, and should be booked in advance. The grotto opens in favourable weather and sea conditions only and visits are suspended in rough seas, so check the official site or the Alghero tourist office on the day.

How hard is the stairway down to Neptune’s Grotto?

The Escala del Cabirol, the “roe deer’s stairway”, is demanding: 654 steps down a cliff that the grotto’s official site gives as 119 metres high, and the same steps back up afterwards, much of it in full sun. The official guidance advises against it for anyone with heart conditions or breathing difficulties, recommends a hat, sunscreen, water and sturdy shoes or walking boots, not flip-flops, and notes that the cave is not accessible to wheelchair users. In the hottest summer weather the land route has occasionally been closed for the day, as happened in August 2026, while boats continued to run.

Which prehistoric sites can you see near Alghero?

The two to see are the Nuraghe di Palmavera, a Bronze Age tower and village, and the Necropolis of Anghelu Ruju, a cemetery of rock-cut tombs; both are within about 12 kilometres of the town. Palmavera lies off the road to Fertilia and Porto Conte, about a kilometre and a half from the sea. Its main tower was built in the fifteenth or fourteenth century BC, a second tower and an enclosing bastion were added around the ninth century BC, and a village of round huts grew around them. The largest, the meeting hut, is about 12 metres across and held a stone seat and a model nuraghe; the original model is in the G. A. Sanna museum in Sassari and a copy stands on site. The settlement seems to have been abandoned after a fire at the end of the eighth century BC. Our guide to the Nuragic civilisation of Sardinia explains who built these towers and why there are thousands of them across the island.

Anghelu Ruju, north of Alghero towards Porto Torres, is far older. Found in 1903, it has 38 tombs cut into the sandstone, the domus de janas or “fairy houses” of Sardinian folklore. Sardegna Turismo dates its main phase to about 3200 to 2800 BC and says it was used for some 1,500 years; the carved bull’s horns and false doors inside the tombs are among the best of their kind. Anghelu Ruju is one of the sites in the serial World Heritage listing of Sardinia’s domus de janas, inscribed by UNESCO in July 2025. Neither is part of the tour’s Alghero day; opening hours vary by season, so check before you go.

Alghero on Day 18 of the tour

On our 25-day tour, Alghero comes on Day 18, the last full day in Sardinia. It follows the UNESCO-listed nuraghe of Su Nuraxi at Barumini on Day 15, Olbia on Day 16 and Maddalena Island on Day 17, and is a full day touring northwest Sardinia from the hotel in Olbia. The itinerary describes Alghero as “a town still protected by its medieval walls and towers”: the group drives across to the town for a self-guided walk of the centre and lunch at your own arrangements, then continues to a local grotto before returning to Olbia, with the rest of the day at leisure.

The crossing to Corsica does not leave from Alghero. On Day 19 the group transfers to Santa Teresa di Gallura, on the island’s northern tip, for the ferry to Bonifacio. The tour is led by an Odyssey Program Leader with local guides at key sites, and its activity level is Level 3, Moderate to Challenging, with up to six hours of activity a day over varied terrain. For the full route across the four islands, see our Mediterranean islands itinerary, and for more ideas across the island, our list of things to do in Sardinia.

Alghero rewards the traveller who knows its story: a Genoese harbour turned Catalan town, now Italian, where a medieval language still lingers on street corners. To see Alghero as part of a longer journey through the islands of the western Mediterranean, explore our 25-day Mediterranean Islands small group tour.