Located on a strip of land in the extreme northwestern part of Sardinia, Stintino stretches out towards Asinara, almost touching it. Right there, exactly where it touches it, lies its masterpiece, La Pelosa: with its clear seabed and shallow waters for dozens of metres, weightless white sand and a dazzling, calm sea with waters in every shade of blue. Next to its ‘big sister’, there is La Pelosetta, closed in by a little island dominated by an Aragonese tower (dated 1578), symbol of La Pelosa. From a ‘terrace’ on the ‘tropical’ beach, at an altitude of two hundred metres, you can enjoy a unique view of Isola Piana and the Asinara National Park, which is unspoilt and wild: Stintino is the nearest place of embarkation if you want to visit it.

The Stintino territory is a strip of land between two seas. To the west, there is the evocative ‘mare di fuori’ (outer sea), with a high and jagged coastline and little coves of sand and pebbles: from Capo Falcone, a wild place that also has a Spanish tower watching from above (the tallest in the Nurra region), while the peregrine falcon and the Eleonora’s falcon fly overhead, as far as Cala del Vapore, through Valle della Luna and Coscia di donna. To the east there is the ‘mare di dentro’ (inner sea) within the gulf: a low and sheltered coastline that stretches from La Pelosa, passing by L’Ancora and the rocks of Punta Negra, as far as the round, white pebbles of the long shoreline of Le Saline and Ezzi Mannu. In the middle, there is a natural oasis with ponds (Cesaraccio and Pilo), where the purple heron, the little egret and the kingfisher live.

In the beginning, Stintino was a fishing village, very similar to Cala d’Oliva on the island of Asinara, a village that originally emerged thanks to 45 Ligurian families, who founded it in 1885, when the Kingdom of Italy established quarantine station and a penal colony there, ‘evicting’ the inhabitants. The village, which became a Municipality in 1988, is located on a strip of land between two inlets – isthintìni means ‘intestines’ – the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ ports, where the wooden gozzi lateen sailboats are moored, of which Stintino is the ‘capital’. Since 1983, a famous lateen sailboat regatta has been held there. The history of the village is inextricably linked to fishing and tuna processing: you can experience this at the Museo della Tonnara (Tuna Fishing Museum), which emerged in the tonnara ‘Saline’, active until the 1970s. Once the main economic resource, it has been telling the modus vivendi of Stintino since 2016: your itinerary will lead you along the ‘rooms’ (the same ones that make up the tuna nets), equipped with original instruments and images. After the tonnara, or tuna fishing, came tourism. In the early 20th century, the village was the destination of illustrious families from Sassari, like the Berlinguer and Segni families, and there was a boom in the 1960s: a myriad of tourist residences and hills appeared along the coast. The village, inhabited by one thousand 600 residents in the winter, is populated by tens of thousands of tourists during the summer. Stintino’s culinary tradition is based on fishing: octopus in garlic sauce and Stintino style, lobster soup, tuna roe, seafood and fresh fish, all of which can be enjoyed at the restaurants located in the little lanes of the village and the coast.