Sardinia, explored in full.

Some seven thousand nuraghi, the conical stone towers raised by a vanished Bronze Age people, stud the interior, none grander than Su Nuraxi at Barumini. Around the coast the empires that coveted the island left their marks in stone, from the Phoenician-Roman ports of Tharros and Nora to Catalan Alghero, where Spanish is still spoken in the lanes.

The interior, the rugged Barbagia around Nuoro and Oliena, remains the island's stubborn heart, a land of shepherds, of pecorino pressed in mountain dairies, of Cannonau reds and the myrtle liqueur called mirtu. The table runs to malloreddus and stuffed culurgiones, to grains of toasted fregola in broth. Yet the coast tells another story entirely, the granite glamour of the Costa Smeralda, the pink sand of the Maddalena islands, the impossible turquoise of the Gulf of Orosei.

Come in late spring or September, when the water is warm, the festivals fill the squares and the crowds of high summer have thinned.