Stintino

Stintino sits on a thin headland at the north-western tip of Sardinia, looking across the narrow Fornelli strait to Asinara Island. The village was founded in 1885 when the Italian state expropriated the population of Asinara to build a prison and agricultural penal colony there; the displaced families settled across the strait and the resulting fishing community kept the name Stintino, meaning 'small intestine' in Sardinian dialect, after the long narrow port-canal that still divides the village. The Asinara penal colony closed in 1997 and the island became a national park the following year — today Asinara is one of the most strictly protected coasts in the Mediterranean, with the endemic albino donkey (Asino bianco dell'Asinara), and Stintino is the only embarkation point. The village itself is small, primarily seasonal, with a working harbour and a single main street. The real draw is two kilometres north: La Pelosa, the shallow turquoise-shelf beach under the 16th-century Aragonese watchtower (Torre della Pelosa, 1578) that fronts every Sardegna postcard. Since 2020 access has been ticketed and capped at 1,500 daily visitors to protect the dune system.