It is hard to describe Asinara in a few words.
We could simply say that it is an island located in the gulf of the same name, facing the extreme north-west of Sardinia. With a surface area of 51 sq km and 110 km of coastline, it is the second largest of Sardinia's smaller islands.
Since 1997 it has been declared a National Park with a Marine Protected Area, becoming a small uncontaminated paradise in which to admire the wild flora and fauna.
But Asinara is much more. It is a magnetic island, where those who walk its paths perceive its long history, made up largely of suffering and imprisonment, but also of common, simple life, marked by the rhythm of the waves.
The history of Asinara is a millenary one, as evidenced by the Domus de Janas of Campo Perdu from the 4th millennium BC.
Over the centuries it has represented a point of reference for sailors who found shelter there; it was home to shepherds, coral workers and tuna fishermen; it was manned by soldiers and archers in its towers erected to defend the Sardinian hinterland from barbarian incursions; it was a hospital and a concentration camp.
In its more recent history it was an agricultural penal colony and a maximum security prison.
And it was simply a "home" for the community made up of the people who worked in the prison and their respective families.
Since 1997 the prison has been abandoned and the territory of the island has been declared a National Park.
Now Asinara is a place of peace, where animals live free and undisturbed, where Nature reigns supreme.
On the island we humans must behave as guests, with the utmost respect for the environment and for the animals that are its owners. And we owe the same respect to the memory of the thousands of people who suffered and lost their lives in it.
