For seven centuries Iglesias dug: the "royal city" founded by the Pisans as Villa di Chiesa was Sardinia's mining capital, and its mines — Monteponi above all — shaped landscape and memory. Today that world can be visited: Porto Flavia, the harbour carved into a sheer sea cliff to load minerals directly onto ships, ranks among Europe's most spectacular industrial-archaeology sites.
The centre keeps Pisan walls, a fourteenth-century cathedral and a Holy Week of hooded processions with a Spanish flavour. The Iglesiente around alternates wild coves and ghost mining villages: a deep Sardinia, far from the beach circuits.
Near Iglesias
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
