Ruins and decades of abandonment: the agony of Asinara, a ghost island

Collapsed roofs, farmhouses swallowed up by the Mediterranean scrub, old prison buildings crumbled by the mistral wind and decades of abandonment.

Seagulls flying over Asinara see a ghost island, where hundreds of buildings transferred at the beginning of the new millennium from the state to the regional government are little more than ruins, now without roofs, crumbling as nature has reclaimed its space.

Only the (few) buildings entrusted to the National Park remain: the greenery of the garden of the Royal Palace, the first building you encounter immediately after disembarking from the Sara D – the ferry that connects the island to Porto Torres three times a day – is an exception in an area of 52 square kilometers where it is difficult to find a single intact building.

Of the 800 properties listed by the State Property Agency to the Autonomous Region of Sardinia twenty-five years ago, only a small portion are still standing.

The latest survey of regional assets on Asinara mentions "150 buildings" and "448 plots of land." The rest has slowly sunk into wild olive trees and mastic bushes.

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