Museums

Unmissable museums in Gallura

There are many museums in Gallura, with varying degrees of fame. Not only does the area offer clear waters and gorgeous landscapes, it also offers so much historical legacy, all catalogued and made visible in exhibition structures and museums.

The Archaeological Museum of Olbia

The Archaeological Museum of Olbia is perhaps one of the most important museums in Gallura. It is a structure divided in different sections: these let the visitor go back in time starting from the Prehistorical times up until the 19th century, going into a lot of detail about the civilisations that have alternated in this part of Sardinia, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Punic and the Roman. In the museum you will find many artefacts and historical documents. It is divided in two floors, and they’re arranged as ample rooms full of objects (pottery, amphorae, funerary equipment), wrecks (particularly from a medieval ship), Greek relics, sculptures (for example the heads of Domitian and Hercules), coin collections, necklaces and so much more.

Galluras Ethnographic Museum, the museum of the “Femina Agabbadora”

The Galluras ethnographic museum is in Luras, very famous for the exhibition of a hammer that in ancient times was used to help men end their own life: the hammer of Femina Agabbadora. The museum is divided into many rooms and floors, through which you can feel the ancient atmosphere. On the different floors you can see the vast collection of relics tied to farming, herding and other work instruments. The more you go up the floors the older the furniture and cooking equipment you will find. While going through these rooms it is easy to wonder at the differences of the ancient time with the more modern times.

The Cork Museum of Calangianus

Among Gallura’s most beautiful museums it would be hard not to mention the one in Calangianus, dedicated to the processing of cork. This museum has the ability to take visitors to a never-before-seen ancient history, which shows on the different floors the way cork was made both on an industrial and a craftmanship scale, including the process of extracting the material from oak trees. Calangianus is still today one of the main centres of cork production in the area.

The Museum of the Sea Civilisations of San Teodoro

The museum of the Sea Civilisations of San Teodoro is divided in two sections: an archaeological side and a naturalistic-environmentalist side. Visiting this museums means jumping into a long, millennial history that teaches you the stories of this coastal area from 350 B.C. to the medieval times – the path is distributed in the different rooms that contain all the relics and other historical reconstructions (the most ancient one being a Greek-Italic amphora). The relics contain a large exposition from the Punic era until it shows, within an appropriate glass case, the most recent relics (1500s-1700s): photo tables, amphoras, coin collections, tableware and kitchen ceramics, necklaces and bronze accessories.

The Museums of Tempio Pausania

In Tempio you will find the Diocesan Museum of Tempio Ampurias, containing a massive exposition on sacred and liturgical objects, paintings and ancient documents. One particular museum is the historical museum of the cork making, while another one of great interest is the Museum of Bernardo De Mauro, internationally famous tenor who passed away in 1955.