Calasetta

Calasetta sits on the northwest tip of the island of Sant'Antioco, founded in 1770 by Ligurian families who had spent two centuries on the Tunisian island of Tabarka working as coral fishermen for the Genoese Lomellini. When the Tabarka colony collapsed in 1738, King Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy received them in the Kingdom of Sardinia: part settled Carloforte on Isola di San Pietro, the rest received Calasetta thirty-two years later. The grid plan and low whitewashed houses come from that founding.

The Tabarchino dialect, a variant of Ligurian, is still spoken alongside Italian. The Torre Sabauda, an eleven-meter truncated cone built in the late 18th century as part of the coastal defense network, now houses an exhibition on the town and the territory. The MACC, the Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 2007, holds a collection of European painting from 1960 to 1970 unusual for a town of three thousand.