Alberto Ferrero della Marmora · 1826 · overland
Alberto della Marmora was exiled to Sardinia in 1822 for liberal sympathies and spent six years measuring it - the first trigonometric survey of the island, its geology, its antiquities and its economy. The Voyage en Sardaigne appeared in Paris in 1826 and every later traveller carried it.
- 1Cagliari
The capital, and the base. Della Marmora arrives in 1822 exiled from Piedmont for suspected liberal sympathies, and spends the next six years doing what the island's occupiers had never bothered to do: measuring it.
- 2Quartu Sant'Elena
East of the capital, and the Campidano plain - the agricultural heartland, surveyed for soil, yield and the salt pans of the Molentargius lagoon behind the town.
- 3Nora
The Phoenician city on the Pula promontory, founded before Carthage and half under water. Della Marmora's plans and sections of the site are the first proper archaeological record of it.
- 4Iglesias
The mining town of the Iglesiente, and the argentiferous lead, zinc and calamine veins - worked since Carthage, codified in the thirteenth-century Breve di Villa di Chiesa, and mapped here for the first time geologically.
- 5The Temple of Antas
A Roman temple to Sardus Pater Babai, the island's own god, raised over a Carthaginian sanctuary in the hills above Fluminimaggiore - one of the antiquities that fills the second part of the Voyage.
- 6Portoscuso
The embarkation point on the mainland shore for the crossing to the islands off the south-west corner - a tonnara town, and the tuna fishery is one of the industries the statistical volume counts.
- 7Carloforte
On the island of San Pietro, settled in 1738 by Ligurian coral fishers from Tabarka and still speaking Tabarchino, a Genoese dialect. Della Marmora records the colony as the anomaly it is.
- 8Cagliari
Back to the capital and the harbour, to write up the southern survey before turning north. The trigonometric network he lays across the island will be the basis of every Sardinian map for a century.
- 9Sanluri
The Campidano again, and the castle - and the plain of Sanluri, where in 1409 the Aragonese broke the Giudicato of Arborea and with it Sardinian independence.
- 10Oristano
Capital of the Giudicato of Arborea and the town of Eleonora, whose Carta de Logu of 1392 was still the island's law code when della Marmora arrived - four hundred years of continuous use.
- 11San Giovanni di Sinis
The Sinis peninsula and the ruins of Tharros, another Phoenician foundation, with one of the oldest churches in Sardinia beside it. Surveyed for the antiquities volume.
- 12Fordongianus
Forum Traiani, and the Roman baths still running at fifty-four degrees over the Tirso - thermal springs measured and recorded with the rest of the island's waters.
- 13Macomer
The basalt tableland of the Marghine and the nuraghe of Santa Barbara. The nuraghi are the thing the Voyage is most remembered for: della Marmora was the first to treat them as a subject rather than a curiosity.
- 14Bosa
The Temo, the only navigable river in Sardinia, and the Malaspina castle above it - a river town on a coast that has almost none.
- 15Alghero
A Catalan city on a Sardinian island. Taken by the Crown of Aragon in 1353, repopulated from Catalonia, and still speaking Alguerès - which della Marmora notes as a living survival, not a memory.
- 16Porto Torres
Turris Libisonis, the Roman colony on the north coast, with its bridge and basilica - and the port through which the island's exports left for the mainland.
- 17Sassari
The second city and the university town, and the administrative centre of the north - where della Marmora found what records there were and the officials who kept them.
- 18Castelsardo
The Doria stronghold on its headland above the Gulf of Asinara, and the Anglona coast - surveyed for the trigonometric net and drawn for the atlas.
- 19Tempio Pausania
Gallura, and granite - a different geology and a different language, the Gallurese of the north-east being closer to Corsican than to Sardinian. Cork oak country.
- 20Santa Teresa Gallura
The northern tip, and the Strait of Bonifacio - eleven kilometres of water to Corsica, which della Marmora could see from the shore and which fixed the northern end of his survey.
- 21Nuoro
The Barbagia, the interior that Rome never fully held and Aragon barely touched - the part of the island where the survey stops being a matter of roads and becomes mountain work.
- 22Fonni
The highest village in Sardinia at a thousand metres, under the Gennargentu, and the base for the ascent.
- 23Punta La Marmora
The summit of the Gennargentu and the highest point on the island at 1,834 metres - triangulated by della Marmora and, since, named after him. Perdas Carpias in Sardinian: split stones.
- 24Aritzo
A mountain town with a trade in snow: ice cut from the Gennargentu, packed in the neviere and carried down to Cagliari through the summer. One of the small economies the statistical volume catches.
- 25Baunei
The Ogliastra and the limestone of the Supramonte, dropping straight into the sea - the least accessible coast in Sardinia and the hardest ground on the whole survey.
- 26Tortoli
The east coast and the port of Arbatax, and the road south along the Ogliastra shore.
- 27Cagliari
Back to where he started, six years and one island later. The Voyage en Sardaigne appears in Paris in 1826 and is still the book every later traveller to Sardinia sets out with.