Carloforte Voyage Tips and guide

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Carloforte is among the first tourist centres on the southwestern coast of Sardinia, Italy. The town is appreciated for its cultural and linguistic distinctiveness, its remarkable culinary tradition with Ligurian and Tunisian influences, and its landscape characterized by wild cliffs and excellent swimming beaches.

In the centre of the eastern coast of the island of San Pietro in the Sulcis archipelago, which is part of the Sulcis subregion in Sud Sardegna, Carloforte (U Pàiže, meaning "The Village" in Tabarchan Ligurian, Carluforti in Campidanese Sardinian) develops on a hill starting from the port, facing the coasts of Portoscuso, San Giovanni Suergiu, and Calasetta. It is about 70 km (43 mi) by car from Cagliari and as the crow flies about 6 km (3.7 mi) from the island of Sant'Antioco, 360 km (220 mi) from the Balearic Islands, and 245 km (152 mi) from Tabarka in Tunisia.

The first inhabitants of the area of present-day Carloforte were the Nuragic people, as evidenced by some remains of a monotorre nuraghe found near the old mining washery not far from the town. Similarly to other sites in Sulcis, first among them Sant'Antioco, a Phoenician trading post called Enosim or Inosim was established alongside the Nuragic settlement around the 8th century BC, to be located in the area of the San Vittorio tower, which today houses the museum that tells the story of the island from its geological origins to the time of the Tabarchina foundation. Traces of the Punic colony have also been found in the upper part of the current urban center, between the church of Novelli Innocenti and the sports field.

The Phoenician city later became Roman, the thriving commercial center of Accipitrum insula ("island of the sparrowhawks"), which would take the name of San Pietro only in the early medieval period, when the Sulcis archipelago was already almost depopulated due to the attacks of Saracen piracy that had forced the Sardinian population to retreat to the interior of the mother island, particularly to the villages of Tratalias and Iglesias.

In 1738, the Ligurian inhabitants of the Tunisian island of Tabarka, feeling threatened by the raïs of Tunis and Algiers, sought help from King Carlo Emanuele II of Savoy to grant them a safe place to settle, receiving the island of San Pietro as a fief. The newly founded settlement was named Carloforte in honor of the sovereign and chose San Carlo Borromeo as its patron saint. The colonists proved determined and tenacious in reclaiming arable land from the marshy areas, continuing the art of tuna fishing, which migrates along the northern coast of the island where the tuna fishery stands, and in resisting the waves of North African corsairs who periodically attacked the town with terrible raids and kidnappings (notably in 1798 when more than 900 Carlofortinians were enslaved), after which it was decided to build fortifications, starting in 1806, that are still visible in the upper district of Castello.

After a 19th-century interlude dedicated to the maritime transport of minerals extracted from the Sulcis mines, the economy of the village from the second half of the 20th century has turned to fishing, craftsmanship, and tourism, activities in which the Carlofortinians show great pride in their origins, culture, and language.

• Carloforte Tourism website