‘Monumentiaperti’ Alghero

The 2nd weekend in May, each year in Sardinia is special. The island opens up all the religious monuments, churches, museums and some other related places of interest for free, to help encourage the locals and tourists alike to visit these places and celebrate the rich history of the island and perhaps learn something of Sardinia’s past. Local school children are present in each monument to help guide the visitors around and talk knowledgeably about the monuments history and elaborate on the important points of interest. It never fails to surprise me however, how poorly advertised events such as these are! The May Day Nautical event a few weeks ago appeared to be very badly advertised too, which is such a shame when clearly a lot of hard work and time has gone into organising such events.

This year we were able to take advantage of this opportunity and visited many sights in and around Alghero, some of which we had visited before and others which we were visiting for the 1st time. We climbed to the top of the Bell Tower of Saint Mary Cathedral and were able to see right over the roof tops of Alghero and across the sea to Capo Caccia and beyond. The views were spectacular and well worth the climb to the top.

Duomo Alghero, viewed from the Bell Tower
View over Alghero Marina and the new town
Capo Caccia viewed from the Bell Tower

We also visited the Church of San Francesco and the cloister which date back to the Gothic period, end of 15th century and the very well preserved, very precious Church of Santa Barbara with it wonderful, colourful painted walls and ceiling.

Cloister of the Church of San Francesco

There are so many interesting, historical monuments and churches in Alghero that we have still yet to visit all of them, but my favorite so far is the small and beautiful Church of Saint Barbara.