Sardinia
Sardinia, officially the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea after Sicily, and one of the twenty regions of Italy. It is located 200 km west of the Italian Peninsula, 200 km north of Tunisia, and 16.45 km south of the French island of Corsica. Sardinia is one of five Italian regions with statutory domestic autonomy. It is divided into six provinces and two metropolitan cities. Cagliari is the capital and largest city, followed by Sassari. It has over 1.5 million inhabitants as of 2025.
Sardinia's indigenous language and the Algherese dialect of Catalan are recognized by both regional and national law as two of Italy's twelve official linguistic minorities, albeit gravely endangered; regional law provides some degree of protection and recognition of the island's other minority languages: the Corsican-influenced Sassarese and Gallurese, and Tabarchino Ligurian.
Owing to its varied ecosystems, which include mountains, woods, plains, streams, rocky coasts, and long sandy beaches, Sardinia has been metaphorically described as a micro-continent. In the modern era, many travelers and writers have extolled the beauty of its long-untouched landscapes, which retain vestiges of the prehistoric Nuragic civilization.
Etymology
The name Sardinia has pre-Latin roots. It comes from the pre-Roman ethnonym *srd-, later romanised as sardus. It makes its first appearance on the Nora Stone, where the word ŠRDN, or *Šardana, testifies to the name's existence when the Phoenician merchants first arrived.According to Timaeus, one of Plato's dialogues, Sardinia and its people as well might have been named after a legendary woman called Sardṓ, born in Sardis, capital of the ancient Kingdom of Lydia. There has also been speculation that identifies the ancient Nuragic Sards with the Sherden, one of the Sea Peoples. It is suggested that the name had a religious connotation from its use also as the adjective for the ancient Sardinian mythological hero-god Sardus Pater, as well as being the stem of the adjective "sardonic".
In classical antiquity, Sardinia was called a number of names besides Sardṓ or Sardinia, like Ichnusa, and .
Geography
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of. It is situated between 38° 51' and 41° 18' latitude north and 8° 8' and 9° 50' east longitude. To the west of Sardinia is the Sea of Sardinia, a unit of the Mediterranean Sea; to Sardinia's east is the Tyrrhenian Sea, which is also an element of the Mediterranean Sea.The nearest land masses are the island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia, the Balearic Islands, and Provence. The Tyrrhenian Sea portion of the Mediterranean Sea is directly to the east of Sardinia between the Sardinian east coast and the west coast of the Italian mainland peninsula. The Strait of Bonifacio is directly north of Sardinia and separates Sardinia from the French island of Corsica.
The coast of Sardinia is long. It is generally high and rocky, with long, relatively straight stretches, outstanding headlands, wide, deep bays, rias, and inlets with various smaller islands.
The island has an ancient geoformation and, unlike Sicily and mainland Italy, is not earthquake-prone. Its rocks date in fact from the Palaeozoic Era. The Cambrian-Lower Ordovician succession of Sardinia reaches 1500–3000 m in thickness. Due to long erosion processes, the island's highlands, formed of granite, schist, trachyte, basalt, sandstone and dolomite limestone, average at between. The highest peak is Punta La Marmora , part of the Gennargentu Ranges in the centre of the island. Other mountain chains are Monte Limbara in the northeast, the Chain of Marghine and Goceano running crosswise for towards the north, the Monte Albo, the Sette Fratelli Range in the southeast, and the Sulcis Mountains and the Monte Linas. The island's ranges and plateaux are separated by wide alluvial valleys and flatlands, the main ones being the Campidano in the southwest between Oristano and Cagliari and the Nurra in the northwest.
Sardinia has few major rivers, the largest being the Tirso, long, which flows into the Sea of Sardinia, the Coghinas and the Flumendosa. There are 54 artificial lakes and dams that supply water and electricity. The main ones are Lake Omodeo and Lake Coghinas. The only natural freshwater lake is Lago di Baratz. A number of large, shallow, salt-water lagoons and pools are located along the coast.
Climate
The climate of the island is variable from area to area, due to several factors including the extension in latitude and the elevation. It can be classified in two different macrobioclimates, one macrobioclimatic variant, and four classes of continentality, eight thermotypic horizons, and seven ombrotypic horizons, resulting in a combination of 43 different isobioclimates.During the year there is a major concentration of rainfall in the winter and autumn, some heavy showers in the spring and snowfalls in the highlands. The average temperature is between, with mild winters and warm summers on the coasts, and cold winters and cool summers on the mountains.
Rainfall has a Mediterranean distribution all over the island, with almost totally rainless summers and wet autumns, winters and springs. However, in summer, the rare rainfalls can be characterized by short but severe thunderstorms, which can cause flash floods. The climate is also heavily influenced by the vicinity of the Gulf of Genoa and the relative proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. Low pressures in autumn can generate the formation of the so-called Medicanes, extratropical cyclones which affect the Mediterranean basin. In 2013, the island was hit by several cyclones, included the Cyclone Cleopatra, which dumped of rainfall within an hour and a half.
Sardinia being relatively large and hilly, weather is not uniform; in particular the East is drier, but paradoxically it suffers the worst rainstorms: in autumn 2009, it rained more than in a single day in Siniscola, and 19 November 2013, locations in Sardinia were reported to have received more than within two hours. The western coast has a higher distribution of rainfalls even for modest elevations. The driest part of the island is the coast of Cagliari gulf, with less than per year, the minimum is at Capo Carbonara at the extreme south-east of the island, and the wettest is the top of the Gennargentu mountain with almost per year. The average for the entire island is about per year, which is more than enough for the needs of the population and vegetation. The Mistral from the northwest is the dominant wind on and off throughout the year, though it is most prevalent in winter and spring. It can blow quite strongly, but it is usually dry and cool.
History
Sardinia has been inhabited by humans since the end of the Paleolithic era, around 20–10,000 years ago. The island's most notable civilization is the indigenous Nuragic, which flourished from the 18th century BC to either 238 BC or the 2nd century AD in some parts of the island, and to the 6th century AD in that part of the island known as Barbagia.After a period in which the island was ruled by a political and economic alliance between the Nuragic Sardinians and the Phoenicians, parts of it were conquered by Carthage in the late 6th century BC, and by Rome in 238 BC. The Roman occupation lasted for 700 years.
Beginning in the Early Middle Ages, the island was ruled by the Vandals and the Byzantines. In practice, the island was disconnected from Byzantium's territorial influence, which allowed the Sardinians to provide themselves with a self-ruling political organization, the four kingdoms known as Judicates. The Italian maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa struggled to impose political control over these indigenous kingdoms, but it was the Iberian Crown of Aragon which, in 1324, succeeded in bringing the island under its control, consolidating it into the Kingdom of Sardinia.
This Iberian kingdom endured until 1718, when it was ceded to the Alpine House of Savoy; the Savoyards would politically merge their insular possession with their domains on the Italian Mainland which, during the period of Italian unification, they would go on to expand to include the whole Italian peninsula; their territory was so renamed into the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, and it was reconstituted as the present-day Italian Republic in 1946.
Prehistory
Sardinia is one of the most geologically ancient bodies of land in Europe. The island was populated in various waves of immigration from prehistory until recent times.Remains from Corbeddu Cave in eastern Sardinia have been suggested by some authors to represent the earliest evidence of human presence on Sardinia, around 20,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum. However, other authors contend that there is no solid evidence for the occupation of the island until the early Mesolithic, around 10,000 years ago.
The Neolithic began on Sardinia during the 6th millennium BC resulting from the migration of Early European Farmers, replacing the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer populations, with a material culture including the widespread Cardium pottery style. In the mid-Neolithic period, the Ozieri culture, probably of Aegean origin, flourished on the island spreading the hypogeum tombs known as domus de Janas, while the Arzachena culture of Gallura built the first megaliths: circular tombs. In the early 3rd millennium BC, the metallurgy of copper and silver began to develop.
During the late Chalcolithic the so-called Beaker culture, coming from various parts of Continental Europe, appeared in Sardinia. These new people predominantly settled on the west coast, where the majority of the sites attributed to them had been found. The Beaker culture was followed in the early Bronze Age by the Bonnanaro culture which showed both reminiscences of the Beaker and influences by the Polada culture.
As time passed the different Sardinian populations appear to have become united in customs, yet remained politically divided into various small, tribal groupings, at times banding together against invading forces from the sea, and at others waging war against each other. Habitations consisted of round thatched stone huts.