Deep inside a mountain, close to Sardinia’s historic mining capital of Iglesias, my guide Maria Laura Mocci calls for the lights to be turned on. Ghostly forms emerge from the gloom: Stalactites, slick and wet-looking, hang overhead, and vast stalagmites rise like grotesque candles, ringed with tier upon tier of what looks like dripping wax. Brown barite crystals cling to the walls, and “cave clouds,” or white mineral crusts, creep across the rock. No one had set foot in this cave, formed from rock some 500 million years old, until 1952, when miners in the nearby San Giovanni mine blasted through a wall and stepped inside by candlelight. They named it for their patron saint: the Santa Barbara Cave.
This won’t be the last time I venture underground on my trip exploring southwestern Sardinia. I’m hiking part of the Cammino Minerario di Santa Barbara, or CMSB, a 310-mile trail that preserves the island’s industrial heritage while rejuvenating the former mining communities.
“When you’re here, you’re not just looking,” Mauro Usai, president of Fondazione Cammino Minerario di Santa Barbara, the foundation behind the route, tells me. “[You’re here] to understand what happened.”
What is the Cammino Minerario di Santa Barbara?
The long hike in Sardinia is all about mines and sea caves.
Photo by Fabrizio Ardito
Humans have been chipping away at Sardinia’s rocks for more than 8,000 years, but the industry boomed in the mid-19th century, as companies dug for lead, zinc, silver, and coal. When most mines closed in the 1990s, local communities were left struggling. The route, founded by volunteers in 2016, follows mule tracks, dirt roads, and old miners’ paths, from the southwest coast—with its sea cliffs and some of the highest sand dunes in Europe—to the forested peaks of Monte Linas. Along the way, you can ride mine trains and elevators deep into the mountains to gawp at natural caves, pull on a hard hat to explore tunnels, and drink lager brewed in old industrial buildings, all while learning how mining shaped the island.
The hike is broken into 30 stages that average about 10 miles each. The full route takes about a month to walk, but buses link stage towns, so it’s easy to enjoy shorter sections. You can start and end in Iglesias, which is 40 minutes by train from the capital, Cagliari. There, at the foundation’s office, I picked up my credenziale, or pilgrim’s passport, to stamp at the end of each stage and at partner businesses. Costing €10, the document offers discounts, including a flat €28 bed-and-breakfast rate at partner guesthouses. A digital version is available on the CMSB app.
How to plan your Cammino
The CMSB’s English-language app holds information on stages, stays, partner businesses, luggage transfers, and booking mine tours. The route is open year-round, but you’ll want to avoid the July and August heat. October to November or March to May is ideal, as days are warm and the trails are empty, but do check seasonal opening times for mining sites if you’re hoping for tours.
Hike for views of abandoned mines and sparkling coastal cliffs
The town of Masua has a scenic beach with a view of the Pan di Zucchero sea stack.
Photo by tartaphotography/Shutterstock
On the west coast, I hike between rosemary and feathery elicriso (a curry plant) on old miners’ paths to the small towns of Masua and Buggerru. Crumbling chimneys perch above the cliffs and hopper carts lie tipped beside empty-windowed buildings. It’s eerily beautiful and eerily quiet.
Mining life was brutal: In Buggerru, soldiers fatally shot three striking miners in 1904, setting off Italy’s first national general strike. I follow guide Stefania Cotini up a hill above the town to Galleria Henry, a 0.6-mile-long underground rail tunnel that was built in 1892 to transport minerals. Inside, the walls are still black with soot, and rusting drills and detonators lay forgotten. The tunnels were shored up with pine, she explains, because wood “talks”: Its creaking beams warned that the rock was shifting.
A conveyor belt once swung out from the cliff face at Porto Flavia—a 1924 harbor hidden inside a sea bluff, 52 feet above the ocean—to load ships with ore. My helmeted tour follows old rail tracks through a 2,000-foot tunnel and ends in a dazzle of blue waters and views of Pan di Zucchero, a 436-foot-tall sea stack.
Continue onward for mine-brewed beer and an ancient grave
Even coal mine ruins look regal in Montevecchio.
Photo by Andrea Etzi/Shutterstock
Cork oak and beech trees cloak the low peaks of the Marganai mountains. In Montevecchio, the local mine’s old power station is now Birrificio 4 Mori, a craft brewery whose taproom pours German-style lagers named after the mine’s shafts.
From here, I followed the CMSB’s blue-and-yellow trailblazers. On the six-mile stage from Arbus to Gonnosfanadiga, I stop for lunch beside a Giant’s Tomb, a spooky, Bronze Age megalithic grave whose lichen-blotched stones make concentric circles that curve toward the dark mouth of a burial chamber.
Next comes a tough, 13-mile stage, climbing 3,300 feet through the Monte Linas massif. I scramble up yellow dolomite stone steps, seeing nobody: just goats, farm dogs, and a streak moving through the undergrowth that I’m sure is a wild boar. Deep in the Montimannu Forest, I find hundreds of shards of pink quartz in a stream running from a locked mine entrance.
Where to stay along the Cammino Minerario di Santa Barbara
“Lots of people have decided to stay in Sardinia and turn their grandmother’s house into accommodation,” says Nicola Calvia, the point of contact for hikers at Fondazione Cammino Minerario di Santa Barbara. The guesthouses I stayed in were simple but hospitable. In the town of Villacidro, my host, Angela, beamed as she offered me a locally brewed Ichnusa lager and a traditional Sardinian treat called ciambelline sarde (flower-shaped cookies sandwiched together with jelly), all on the house.
The foundation owns nine posadas that are basic hostels (some with private rooms) located in former police stations, schools, and miners’ lodges. They cost €25 a night, include breakfast, and are low-frills, but staying in one means being next to the communities the route was built to support. When I stayed at Posada di Portixeddu, I noticed a tiny, open-air farm shop across the road with a number scrawled on a sign outside. A fellow posada guest called the number one morning, and a farmer soon turned up to sell us plump vegetables, local honey, and mirto, a traditional Sardinian liqueur made from myrtle berries.
For more comfort, try the 10-room Albergo Al Cinghiale hotel in former miners’ lodgings in Montevecchio. Its downstairs bar is open to the public and serves spritzes on a twinkle-lit terrace overlooking the town square. Or head to Le Dune Piscinas, an art-filled hotel in an old mining warehouse. The building sits beside the route amid some of Europe’s tallest dunes, with direct access to 11 miles of Costa Verde beach.
