Phoenician traders founded Nora on a low cape south of Cagliari, and Carthaginians and then Romans built over them, so the ruins read as a layered port town with the sea on three sides.
Here in 1773 came the Nora Stone, a Phoenician inscription of the late ninth or early eighth century BC that gives the earliest written form of the island’s name; it now sits in Cagliari’s national archaeological museum. On site, walk the paved Roman streets, the bath complex with its mosaic floors and the small theatre, still used for summer performances. Erosion has taken part of the ancient town into the water, and on calm days you can make out walls just under the surface.
