The fact that Urbino is home to only 14,000 people adds to its charms, as does the presence of the Università di Urbino (one of Italy’s oldest) whose roaming groups of students stop the city feeling like an open-air museum. Its hilltop red-brick buildings can be seen from miles away, and the pedestrianised old town is all steep slopes and narrow alleys lined with 15th-century churches and palaces. The pearl of Le Marche is the walled Unesco-listed city of Urbino, one of the cradles of the Renaissance. Umbria became the new Tuscany decades ago, but the region next door, Le Marche, never quite gained that status, despite its beaches, rolling hills and medieval towns. It’s hard not to be charmed by its Museum of Peasant Technology (Wed-Sun, €5) showing tools, toys and household implements from years gone by. The peninsula is perfect for cycling: bikes can be hired from in Oristano, or from hotels and agriturismos.Ī half-hour drive inland, Santu Lussurgiu is a 1,000-year-old village in the caldera of an extinct volcano. The most striking beach is Is Arutas, further north: glistening between ochre rocks, its “sand” is actually tiny white quartz pebbles, resembling risotto rice. The latter is an arc of fine sand backed by low cliffs close to the ruins of Tharros (open daily, April-October), a Phoenician-Roman port abandoned in 1070 in the face of repeated pirate attacks. To its west – beyond the Cabras lagoon, which is home to 800 nesting flamingoes and the source of some of the world’s best bottarga (cured fish roe) – the Sinis peninsula is flat and rural, with myriad beaches, from Is Arenas in the north to San Giovanni di Sinis in the south. (A rare female judge in the 14th century, she made landmark rulings on rape, women’s rights and wildlife protection that stood for 400 years, until superseded in 1827.)
Oristano town has a baroque cathedral, the island’s biggest, and an archaeology museum – but the chief pleasure is strolling the pedestrianised pink- and cream-painted streets between Piazza Roma, with its 13th-century defence tower, and Piazza Eleonora, named after an early feminist and ecowarrior, Eleonora d’Arborea. Yet it boasts an elegant, historic capital, dramatic landscapes in the Monte Arci national park and unspoilt, unusual beaches on the Sinis peninsula.
Halfway up the island’s west coast, Oristano province has been much less affected by tourism than Alghero or Cagliari. But everything else that makes Italy such a favourite – food, wine, history, art, landscapes and people – is still there to be savoured, and all the more rewarding off the beaten tourist track.
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