Sardinia: Italy's Storied Island

Windsurfers ride on breezes scented with the maquis, Sardinia’s fragrant scrub of herbs and evergreen plants; beach lovers hang on some of the finest, palest sands in the Mediterranean. Chia is the ultimate Mediterranean postcard, and has been sought after for thousands of years. Its strategic shores were once the object of Phoenician, Roman and Arab desires, civilizations whose evocative ruins crumble at nearby Nora. The pretty town of Pula, meanwhile, is a low-key beauty, its zigzagging streets a feast of gelaterias and old-school pizzerias.

Though Sardinia glints with some of the most breathtaking shores in the Mediterranean, its culture has been defined by its rustic interior more than its coast: a landscape of mysterious Bronze Age monuments and ancient shepherd tracks that wind through forests of oak and myrtle. Beneath the peaks of the Supramonte, the old village of Oliena is a charming gateway to Sardinia’s mountainous heart, where eerie caves reach unfathomable depths and olive-shaded gorges run out to meet the sparkling Gulf of Orosei.

Sardinia’s ‘Emerald Coast’ is more accurately defined by blues than greens: the flawless skies, the sweeping turquoise bays and the glassy shallows that lap the wild, juniper-scented islands of La Maddalena, an archipelago of castaway islands whose shores offer some of the finest swimming and diving in the Mediterranean. Wind your way from beach to breathtaking beach, each outdoing the last, all the way to Porto Cervo, where Prada-clad Italians clamor for the best view of the yacht-packed marina.