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The Area
Imagine evergreen countryside, a crystalline turquoise-blue sea,
healthy and unpolluted air, and, perhaps like nowhere else in
the world, you have Castiadas. This is not an exaggeration: there
are more than 20km of coast, wonderful beaches and densely green
landscapes, where a dazzling azure sea washes over vast stretches
of immaculate fine sand.
The large number of Castiadas’s beaches vary in
colour and form from the powder-like, white sand at Cala Pira,
Monte Turno and Sant’Elmo to the more compacted golden sand
at Cala Sinzias, Cala Marina, Villa Rey and Santa Giusta.
A genuine paradise: From the deep waters covered thickly with
posidonia lawns, to the turquoise and emerald-green shallows,
it is one of the most splendid seas in the world.
Castiadas is not only about its sea, however. As well as the
miles and miles
of splendid coastline, the still virginal countryside is an equally
rich inheritance, sufficient to merit a place among the three
“palmares” communities, areas where the vegetation
has  remained
unspoilt as mother nature left it: Passing through the “Seven
Brothers” chain of mountains, for example, via Minni Minni
in the direction of Sa Callazziga, one cannot but be amazed at
the rocks carved out by the rain and wind and awash with junipers
and strawberry trees, raw natural beauty, giving the impression
that time has stood still here.
These forests, a regular destination for many tourists, are truly
marvellous, with their enormous, undefiled holm-oaks, wonderfully
scented junipers twisted
with age, strawberry trees blossoming with white berries, the
different fragrances  of other native species
such as myrtle, rosemary, rock rose and the unmistakable shades
of white and pink oleanders.
From the highest point in the Minni Minni locality, reached on
a guided tour, mountain bike or even on foot, it is possible to
see the whole of Castiadas and a large part of the Villasimius
coast.
A flourishing wild animal life has found its ideal context here.
Its main representatines are ravens, wild boar (both of these
present in ever greater numbers), golden eagles, imperial ravens,
wild cats, martens, foxes, wood pigeons and red woodpeckers, though
there are many others.
The various springs and streams present in the mountains make
it possible for these floral and faunal elements to survive despite
long periods of drought.
This is the town of Castiadas. Its history according to research
carried out, goes back to the C14th AD, its name at the time being
Villanova Castiadas. Because of frequent malaria and plague epidemics
at the end of the 1500s the village remained uninhabited for around
350 years. Then, on 11th August 1875, following a Home Office
decree, 30 prisoners and 7 guards disembarked on the deserted
beach of Sinzias, with the task of reclaiming and giving new life
to the infected place, for so long uninhabited and overgrown.
Thus, with the prisoners, life came back to Castiadas and year
by year, brick by brick, they shaped what would become the largest
penal colony in Italy, reaching a maximum of 750 inmates, 100
warders and over 70 secondary staff and family members.
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