Valle della Luna

In northern Gallura, a few kilometres from the village of Aggius, the landscape stops behaving by the usual rules of the Mediterranean terrain. The vegetation thins out, holm oaks and cork oaks give way to an open expanse, and granite — the raw material of this whole part of Sardinia — surfaces in blocks of improbable size, smoothed and sculpted by millennia of wind erosion into shapes the eye struggles to reconcile with ordinary geology. This is the Piana dei Grandi Sassi (Plain of the Great Stones), more commonly known as Valle della Luna, a name that is not postcard poetry but an almost literal description of what one sees: a landscape recalling photographs of the lunar surface, its isolated rock masses casting sharp shadows on the pale ground.

Aggius, the village overlooking the valley, is recognised as a Borgo Autentico d'Italia (Authentic Village of Italy) and holds the Bandiera Arancione (Orange Flag) of the Touring Club Italiano. It sits at the foot of the Monti di Aggius ridge, a sequence of granite peaks — Monti di Mezu at 782 metres, Monti Sotza at 778, Monti Polcu at 675 — that close the horizon to the north with a jagged profile. The historic centre keeps its granite exposed in the walls and paving, and in the lanes bearing names of ancient Gallurese origin: Paràula, Speslunga, Piazza di li Baddhi. Valle della Luna is reached by descending from the village toward the plain, and the viewpoint along the road offers a first overall reading of the landscape before entering it on foot.

What sets this place apart from Sardinia's other granite formations is also the human presence that has taken root here over time. Starting in the 1970s, a small community of alternative outlook chose to settle permanently among the rocks, building rudimentary dwellings and organising their life around principles of self-sufficiency. The community still exists, discreet and rooted, and it gives Valle della Luna a layering that goes beyond the natural setting: the landscape is also, unusually for Italy, a space lived according to logics deliberately different from those of the surrounding territory.

The paths crossing the plain allow one to move among the granite blocks at low elevation, with no demanding gradients, and to explore the shapes of the rocks up close — some of which have earned popular names tied to the silhouettes they evoke. The light changes the character of the place noticeably: in the early morning or late afternoon, when shadows stretch between the boulders, the reading of the space becomes denser. The absence of heavy tourist infrastructure keeps the place in a condition of relative quiet even in the summer months, when the Gallura coast and the Costa Smeralda draw the great majority of visitors.