Arcipelago di La Maddalena
A granite archipelago in the Strait of Bonifacio — seven wind-carved islands and their turquoise coves, with Garibaldi's farm on Caprera and a pink beach under strict guard.
The Maddalena archipelago is what happens when a granite massif drowns in the windiest strait of the western Mediterranean. Seven main islands and a scatter of islets sit in the Bocche di Bonifacio between Sardinia and Corsica, sculpted by the maestrale into tafoni hollows and animal-shaped tors, ringed by water so clear the moored boats seem to hang in air. The national park, created in 1994 as Sardinia's first, covers every island and three times as much sea as land, and faces France's Lavezzi islands reserve across the strait — the two halves of a single ecosystem run in tandem by the two countries.
The islands' history is naval. Nelson's fleet anchored here on and off for a year and a half before Trafalgar — his gift of silver candlesticks and a crucifix is still in La Maddalena's parish church — and the town that grew around the anchorage stayed a garrison and navy place through two centuries, hosting a US submarine base until 2008. Caprera, joined to La Maddalena by a causeway bridge, is the archipelago's green island: Garibaldi bought half of it in 1855, farmed it between revolutions, and died there in 1882; his white house, his vines and his tomb are kept as the Compendio Garibaldino, Italy's quietest major shrine. Budelli, further north, holds the Spiaggia Rosa, its sand tinted pink by fragments of a foraminifer — plundered by souvenir-takers for decades, roped off since the 1990s, and watched over for thirty years by a resident hermit caretaker who left only in 2021.
Day to day the park is experienced by boat: the classic circuit threads Spargi's Cala Corsara, the shallow lagoon-strait between Budelli, Razzoli and Santa Maria, and Caprera's east coast, where Cala Coticcio — nicknamed Tahiti — is now visitable only with a park guide and a daily quota, the price of two decades of Instagram. Shearwaters and shags work the outer stacks; peregrines nest on the granite.
What's worth knowing before you go
Ferries shuttle from Palau to La Maddalena every fifteen to thirty minutes; the town has the beds and the boat operators, Caprera has the walks. A scooter or bike covers La Maddalena's panoramic road easily. Book Cala Coticcio's guided slot ahead in summer, and read the wind before choosing a boat day — a maestrale blows out the west coves and flattens the east ones. The sea code is enforced: no anchoring on posidonia, no landing on Budelli.
The connoisseur's month is October: the water is still warm, the charter fleet is gone, and Garibaldi's house at opening time — the general's boots by the bed, the calendar stopped at his death — has the island to itself.