Nineteenth-century travelers

Sailing ship. Photo by Regione Sardegna Press Office, from Sardegna Digital Library

The history of Sardinia dates back to the 19th century, carrying with it a vast cultural heritage. After the transition to the Savoy in 1718, the new government did not immediately orient itself within a reality that was extremely different from continental lands, and this deepened the fracture between the traditional Spanish culture, now centuries-old, which survived in the usual communications and official acts, and the Piedmontese one, initially hostile and difficult to accept.
In this delicate and not brief phase of transition (also marked by the forced introduction of the Italian language) and amid numerous difficulties, in the first part of the century there was, however, a strong cultural awakening on the island, which began with the release, around the 1920s, of Giuseppe Manno's “History of Sardinia”. At the same time, it is an internal rebirth - cultural and political at the same time - and an external enhancement.
The cause of this renewed attention is in fact both the discovery of the island and by the Sardinians themselves, finally moved by the need to regain possession of their past, the history of their land, perhaps inventing it when it did not seem suggestive enough; and on the part of foreign travelers, writers and writers who saw the land romantically mysterious and captivating to explore and study. The image that is returned by their writings is that of an island far away in space and time, almost the intermediate link between mythology and civilization. The result is the romantic myth of the forgotten island, of an archaic world that moves centuries behind a cultured European nineteenth century, keeping the values of the past intact.
Among the various travelers, Joseph Fuos is the first to give rise, with his work “Nachrichten aus Sardinien” (published in German in 1780), to the myth of the island of Sardinia, followed by the more famous Alberto della Marmora (“Voyage en Sardaigne”, from 1826), from the French Valery (“Voyage en Corse, à l'Ile d'Elbe et in Sardaigne”, from 1835) by the Englishman John Warre Tyndale (“The Island of Sardinia”, from 1849), from Antonio Bresciani (“Of the customs of the island of Sardinia”, 1850).

Update

23/6/2026 - 16:10