Molentargius-Saline Regional Park

Molentargius-Saline Regional Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Molentargius is a wetland of lagoons and abandoned salt pans lying inside the urban area of Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, hemmed in between the city, the suburb of Quartu Sant'Elena and the eight-kilometre beach of Poetto, and it is one of the few places in Europe where thousands of wild flamingos nest within sight of apartment blocks. The main entrance, at the Edificio Sali Scelti, the old salt works offices on Via La Palma, is ten to fifteen minutes by bus, taxi or bicycle from the historic centre and the port, which makes it an easy half-day for cruise passengers and city visitors. Entry is free, and the park is open to walkers and cyclists along several kilometres of level dirt roads and embankments between the basins, with screens and hides for watching the birds;

bicycles can be hired at the entrance. Private cars are not admitted, and the distances are larger than they look, so that those on foot should not expect to see it all. The paid options are all run by the park's concessionaires and local operators from the entrance: a tour by electric minibus or little train with a guide, about an hour, which the brochures call an eco-safari; a boat trip along the canals in a small electric launch; guided birdwatching walks with a naturalist and telescopes; tours by segway or e-bike from the city; and horse rides from a stable on the Quartu side, often ending with an aperitif at sunset, when the low light turns both the water and the birds pink. Binoculars make an enormous difference, since the flamingos generally feed well out in the basins.

Visiting Molentargius-Saline Regional Park: what you will see

The regional park was established in 1999 and covers about 1,600 hectares; the wetland had been recognised as a site of international importance under the Ramsar convention since 1977. Its name is Sardinian: is molentargius were the donkey drivers, from su molenti, the donkey, who carried the salt from the pans to the port. Salt was taken from these shores by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians and the Romans, and the modern saltworks were developed from the 1830s under the Savoy kings, partly with convict labour, and became one of the largest in Italy, with a system of canals, pumping stations, a narrow-gauge railway and a small company town; production ceased in 1985, when the basins were found to be contaminated by sewage, and the buildings and machinery have stood idle since, some restored, some picturesquely decaying. The site is unusual in containing water of every salinity side by side: the Bellarosa Maggiore, the former evaporation basins, intensely salty;

the Bellarosa Minore and the Perdalonga, fresh, fed by rain and treated water, with reedbeds; the brackish Quartu pond; and the Is Arenas, a strip of old sandy shoreline between them. That range is what draws the birds, some 230 species, a third of all those recorded in Europe, in an area one can cycle round in two hours. The greater flamingo, sa genti arrubia, the red people, in Sardinian, wintered here for centuries, and in 1993, for the first time, began to breed; the colony has since produced thousands of chicks in good years, and ten thousand or more birds may be present, stalking through the shallows and filtering brine shrimp, the tiny crustacean whose pigment makes them pink. With them are black-winged stilts, avocets, slender-billed gulls, purple herons, little egrets, purple swamphens, marsh harriers, ferruginous ducks, Kentish plovers and terns, and in winter cormorants and great numbers of duck. Behind the park rises the Sella del Diavolo, the devil's saddle, the limestone headland that closes Poetto beach.

Molentargius-Saline Regional Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from about 6.30 am to 9 pm in summer and until dusk in winter, and guided tours run mainly from spring to autumn, with reduced winter service. Flamingos are present all year, in the greatest numbers from autumn to spring, and they nest from about April to July, when the colony is kept at a distance; spring migration, in April and May, is the richest time for other birds, and winter for wildfowl.

Summer is hot, shadeless and buggy in the middle of the day, so go in the first hours after sunrise or in the last before sunset, which is when the light is best in any case. Bring water, a hat, repellent and binoculars. Allow two to three hours. Poetto beach is next door, Cagliari's Castello quarter and archaeological museum fifteen minutes away, and the Roman site of Nora and the beaches of Villasimius within an hour.