  | Other car rental locations in Alghero (Per day) | |
|
 | Alghero Fertilia Airport car rental - Travel Guide |  |
ALGHERO is a very rare Italian phenomenon: a tourist town that is also a flourishing fishing port, giving it an economic base entirely independent of the summer masses. The predominant flavour here is Catalan, owing to a wholesale Hispanicization that followed the overthrow of the Doria family by Pedro IV of Aragon in 1354, a process so thorough that it became known as "Barcelonetta". The traces are still strong in the old town today, with its flamboyant churches, wrought-iron balconies and narrow cobbled streets named in both Italian and Catalan. Beyond the stout girdle of walls enclosing this historic core, the new town's grid of parallel streets has little of interest beyond its restaurants and hotels.
A walk around the old town should take in the series of seven defensive towers which dominate Alghero's centre and its surrounding walls. From the Giardino Púbblico , the Porta Terra is the first of these massive bulwarks - known as the Jewish Tower, it was erected at the expense of the prosperous Jewish community before their expulsion in 1492. Beyond is a puzzle of lanes, at the heart of which the pedestrianized Via Carlo Alberto, Via Principe Umberto and Via Roma have most of the bars and shops. At the bottom of Via Umberto stands Alghero's sixteenth-century Cattedrale , where Spanish viceroys stopped to take a preliminary oath before taking office in Cágliari. Its incongruously Neoclassical entrance is round the other side on Via Manno; inside, the lofty nave's alternating pillars and columns rise to an impressive octagonal dome.
Most of Alghero's finest architecture dates from the same period and is built in a similar Catalan-Gothic style. Two of the best examples are a short walk away: the Palazzo d'Albis on Piazza Cívica and the elegantly austere Jewish palace Palau Reial in Via Sant'Erasmo.
Outside the old quarter, most of the tourist activity revolves around the port , its wide quay nudged by rows of colourful fishing boats and bordered by bars. The town's beaches begin further north, backed by hotels, many of the older ones converted from villas formerly owned by the expatriate community of central Europeans who fled here after World War I.
|
|
|
|
|
