The beach is younger than many of the people swimming off it: it formed in 1962, when a landslide brought down the white limestone blocks that make up the shore today. Above the cove stands the pinnacle, a 143-metre blade of rock that climbers have been working since the late seventies; the best known route, Sinfonia dei mulini a vento, was opened by Manolo and Alessandro Gogna. Sardinia declared the cove a natural monument in 1993, the Italian state a national monument in 1995, and on 29 April 2025 the list The World's 50 Best Beaches ranked it first in the world.
What to see
The shore is not sand but very fine white gravel with a little sand mixed in, and the pale seabed gives the water a green that looks retouched in photographs. On the right-hand side of the bay a natural arch opens, close enough to swim through in a few strokes. Among the rocks inside the cove a freshwater spring rises from underground and runs into the sea: swim there and you feel the change of temperature on your skin.
Seen from below, the pinnacle changes colour with the light: compact limestone, streaked black by run-off from the rain. The path down crosses a gorge of holm oaks, junipers and oleanders and only in the last few minutes opens onto the bay, at the point where almost everyone stops to look. Goloritzé is also one of the stages of the Selvaggio Blu, the multi-day traverse that follows the Ogliastra coast between Santa Maria Navarrese and Cala Sisine.
Visiting
The only way in is on foot. The path starts on the Golgo plateau above Baunei: 470 metres of descent, about an hour and a half going down and longer coming back. Since the summer of 2007 motorboats have had to stay 200 metres offshore and landing is banned, so anyone sailing from Santa Maria Navarrese or Arbatax sees the cove from the water only. Access to the path is capped: you book online at least a day ahead, pay a small contribution and go in within a ceiling of 300 people a day. There is nothing at the beach: no bar, no umbrellas, no drinking water.
Our editors' tip
We start early, in the first hours of the morning: the path is almost entirely unshaded and the climb back, which is the hard part, goes far better before the heat. Closed shoes with grip, not sandals, because the last stretch is limestone polished smooth by footsteps. We carry at least two litres of water each and take every scrap of rubbish back out, fruit peel included. One last thing: the cove faces east and in the afternoon the wall takes the sun off it earlier than you would expect, so the good swim is the morning one.
