Asinara

Asinara National Park was created in 1997 at the north-western tip of Sardinia, on a long, rugged island of some 52 km². Its history explains its state of preservation: from 1885 and for more than a century the island served as a quarantine station and a penal colony, with a maximum security prison that came to hold mafiosi and terrorists. The civilian population was expelled and access was completely forbidden, so that Asinara spent a hundred years untouched by the tourist development that transformed the rest of the Sardinian coast.

When the prison closed in 1997 the island became a national park and marine protected area, and today it preserves one of the best-kept stretches of coast in the Mediterranean, with coves, cliffs and seabeds of high quality. The vegetation is low Mediterranean scrub, heavily shaped by the wind and by historic grazing, with little tree cover.

Its best-known animal is the Asinara white donkey, a population of albino donkeys that lives free on the island and has become its emblem; its origin is debated and it probably descends from introduced animals that fixed the trait through isolation. They share the island with mouflon, wild boar and feral horses. The waters hold Posidonia meadows and are a passage area for loggerhead turtles and cetaceans. The abandoned prison buildings, scattered across the island, form part of the visitor route today, which is regulated and limited.