Just 50 km from Cagliari Elmas airport, in Chia, in the extreme south of Sardinia, the Lighthouse of Capo Spartivento dominates the landscape from the promontory from which it takes its name. Surrounded by a still wild and uncontaminated nature, where the Mediterranean bush grows in all its splendor of colors and scents, the lighthouse stands on a cliff overlooking the sea, accessible through a dirt road closed to the public. Built in 1854 by the Italian Navy, the lighthouse of Capo Spartivento was one of the twenty royal lighthouses wanted by Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia, whose initials still stand out in the wrought iron frieze above the entrance door. Machine-gunned by American planes during the Second World War, the building underwent its first and only restoration at the end of the conflict. It housed the Farist family until the 1980s, when automation swept away the changing of the guard.
Falling into oblivion for over 30 years, in 2006 the second life of the Lighthouse began. A metamorphosis that began many years earlier, a childhood dream long tucked away in the drawer, an ambitious project that became reality thanks to the passion and dedication of those who put their heads and souls into it. Once again tracing the course, the Cape-Spartivento Lighthouse is now the first and only lighthouse in Italy intended for reception, awarded by the heads of the Italian Navy as an example of recovery of military architecture.
