{"id":231252,"date":"2019-03-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/when-asinara-island-was-the-italian-alcatraz\/"},"modified":"2025-04-03T15:14:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T13:14:32","slug":"when-asinara-island-was-the-italian-alcatraz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/curiosities\/when-asinara-island-was-the-italian-alcatraz\/","title":{"rendered":"When Asinara Island was the Italian Alcatraz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the biggest condemnation was to have the blue sea a few meters away but not to be able to see it for the rest of its days. Only the former bandit and fugitive Matteo Boe<\/strong> plunged back into the crystal clear waters of the Gulf of Asinara,<\/strong> escaping aboard a rubber boat with the help of his cell mate. Boe was the only one to escape from what until 1998 was considered the impregnable (except for him) Italian Alcatraz<\/strong>. Then the maximum security prison<\/strong> of the Asinara closed its doors and opened to the public, becoming an integral and tourist part of the Asinara National Park<\/strong><\/a> four years later, today a naturalistic destination for many vacationers who spend their holidays in Stintino<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Carcere<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, because near the Sassari seafaring village there is not only the famous and highly popular <\/span>beach of the Pelosa<\/strong>, splendid for its transparent sea like few in the world and characteristic for its <\/span>sixteenth-century tower<\/strong>, among the most photographed by tourists. The<\/span> island of Asinara<\/strong> stretches along the most north-western edge of Sardinia, solitary and wild, ideal for a <\/span>relaxing excursion<\/strong>, among dreamy coves and a scrub that cannot be more Mediterranean.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Carcere<\/p>\n

And here, in the midst of the dry and arid vegetation, stands the former penitentiary, which “hosted” illustrious names of organized crime, including the ex-Cosa Nostra boss Tot\u00f2 Riina<\/strong> and former Camorra chief Raffaele Cutolo<\/strong>. But the Asinara super prison was also a place of refuge for the late judges Giovanni Falcone<\/strong> and Paolo Borsellino<\/strong>, who were put under protection until the start of the maxi trial.<\/p>\n

\"Carcere<\/p>\n

The former Asinara district office, during the mid-1800s, before taking up its detention function, was a quarantine health facility<\/strong>. Then, during the First World War<\/strong>, the island became a single large prison, where more than 250 thousand people were imprisoned, most of them Austrian and Hungarian soldiers. In the seventies, the so-called years of lead<\/strong>, the prison confined mainly Red Brigades<\/strong> and mobsters<\/strong> who, except during the hour of air, could hardly admire the blue sky, nor the blue sea of \u00e2\u20ac\u2039\u00e2\u20ac\u2039Sardinia. Only Boe succeeded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asinara Island, a former maximum security prison, is now a tourist destination that tells stories of crime, escapism and wilderness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-post-blog-pro.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1547],"tags":[],"village-conntection":[51118],"class_list":["post-231252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-curiosities","village-conntection-stintino-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231252"},{"taxonomy":"village-conntection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-borghi.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/village-conntection?post=231252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}