The full picture

SAN TEODORO

La Cinta is the beach that most people mention first — a long, shallow lagoon of turquoise water separated from the sea by a thin strip of white sand, with a flamingo colony in the lagoon behind it. It's the kind of beach that makes people reconsider where they live. But San Teodoro has more than its beaches. The surrounding natural parks, the granite rock formations of the Gallura, the cork oak forests that cover the inland hills — this is a landscape of real variety and beauty.

Olbia's Costa Smeralda airport is 25 kilometres away — one of the island's busiest, with direct connections to major European cities, particularly in summer, but increasingly year-round. This proximity changes the calculation for anyone considering Sardinia as a primary residence: the isolation that the island's image sometimes suggests is less real here than almost anywhere else on the coast.

The town itself is active outside of tourist season in a way that smaller coastal villages aren't. Restaurants stay open, markets continue, and there's enough of a permanent population to give daily life its own rhythm independent of summer visitors. Property prices reflect the area's desirability — higher than the Sardinian average — but still far below comparable locations on the Italian or French mainland coast.