All guides

The guides hub is a library of practical, essential-reading articles rather than a directory of local guides for hire, built around the specific questions that trip up first-time visitors to Sardinia.

Several guides cover logistics that genuinely change how a trip runs: how the quota-booking system works for beaches like La Pelosa, Cala Goloritzé, Cala Mariolu, Cala Brandinchi, Lu Impostu and Tuerredda, why renting a car is close to essential given how little of the coast the ARST bus network actually reaches, how to choose between the three airports — Cagliari-Elmas, Olbia Costa Smeralda and Alghero-Fertilia — and which ferry routes connect Sardinia to Civitavecchia, Livorno, Genoa, Naples, Palermo, Barcelona, Toulon, Marseille and, for a Corsica add-on, Bonifacio to Santa Teresa Gallura.

Other guides walk through the island's archaeology, since nearly 7,000 nuraghi can otherwise feel like an undifferentiated backdrop: a guide to Su Nuraxi at Barumini, Sardinia's only UNESCO-listed site, sits alongside guides to the domus de janas rock tombs, the Phoenician-Roman ruins of Tharros and Nora, and the nuragic village of Tiscali hidden inside the Supramonte. Food and wine get dedicated treatment too — what culurgiones, malloreddus, pane carasau, bottarga di Cabras and seadas actually are, and how Cannonau and Vermentino di Gallura differ, both by grape and by region.

A safety-and-etiquette guide covers the sand-removal ban and its genuinely steep fines, along with the more everyday question of when the best season actually is: May to October for swimming, September as the strongest overall compromise, and November to March as the period when many coastal towns close down while Cagliari, Sassari and the interior keep functioning normally. The unifying idea across all of these guides is that they're meant to be read before booking a flight or a beach slot, not worked out by trial and error once you've already landed.