Sardinia's Catalan coast — coral-tinted sea walls, bottarga, and a language that isn't quite Italian
Alghero is a small walled city on Sardinia's northwest coast where the local dialect is still partly Catalan — a legacy of the 14th-century Aragonese conquest that expelled the Sardinian population and replaced it with Catalan settlers whose linguistic and architectural imprint persists six centuries later. The old town sits on a rocky headland surrounded by medieval towers and coral-coloured sea walls, with a Catalan-Gothic cathedral and narrow lanes descending to small fishing harbours overlooking a transparent turquoise sea. The food is distinct: bottarga (cured mullet roe shaved over past…
Alghero was a Sardinian fishing village when Aragonese forces captured it in 1353 and systematically replaced its Ligurian-Sardinian population with Catalan colonists — a resettlement so thorough that by the 15th century Catalan was the only language spoken, and the resulting dialect (Algherese) is still spoken and officially recognised today as a linguistic minority in Italy. The city remained under Aragonese then Spanish Crown rule until 1720, when it passed to the House of Savoy along with the rest of Sardinia, and the coral industry flourished alongside fishing for centuries. The harvesti…