A procession four hundred kilometres long
Sardinian festivals are old, long and taken very seriously.
In Sardinia the festivals are not reconstructed pageants: they are vows, races and rites that nobody ever stopped performing. The calendar is full all year, but the two biggest fall in spring, before the camping months begin.
Sant'Efisio
On the first of May Cagliari carries the statue of Saint Efisio from Cagliari to Nora and back: four days, about a hundred kilometres, and a procession with thousands of people in costume from all over the island and hundreds of traccas, the ox-drawn carts. The vow dates from 1657, when the city asked for an end to the plague, and it has never been broken.
The Sartiglia
At Oristano, on the last Sunday of carnival and on Shrove Tuesday, masked riders charge at a star hung from a wire and try to spear it with a sword: how many stars are taken gives the omen for the harvest. The lead rider is dressed in public and must not touch the ground again until he has ridden.
The others
The Cavalcata Sarda at Sassari, on the second-to-last Sunday of May, lines up the costumes of the whole island. The Ardia at Sedilo, on the sixth and seventh of July, is a horse race around a sanctuary, fast and without written rules. At Sassari on the fourteenth of August comes the Faradda di li candareri, the wooden candlesticks carried on shoulders, Unesco heritage.
The autumn
From September to December comes Autunno in Barbagia: every weekend a different village opens its houses, courtyards and workshops, and you eat and watch people work. It is the best way to see the inland island, and it falls when the coastal campsites have already closed.