Sant’Antioco with its 10,000 inhabitants stands on the ancient Phoenician city of Sulky and overlooks the Gulf of Palmas. The island has a rich archaeological heritage: domus de janas, tombs of the giants, nuraghi, and remains of the Phoenician-Punic and Roman presence. The village, which stretches around the remains of the Savoy fort, has the typical appearance of fishing villages with low, colorful houses.
The island of Sant’Antioco is located at the southwestern coast of Sardinia, opposite the Sulcis-Iglesiente region. The island covers 109 km2 and is the largest in Sardinia and the fourth largest in Italy. It is connected to the coastal hinterland by a thin isthmus, 5 km long, created by marine sediments, which in its own terms forms a peninsula that faces south into the Gulf of Palmas. It is about 90 km from Cagliari.
Its climate is predominantly Mediterranean, with short winters and hot, dry summers mitigated by cool mistral winds. On becalmed days, the landscape, strutting in its lagoon enlivened by colonies of pink flamingos, looks as if it came out of a painter’s palette. A few kilometers from the town are beaches of incomparable beauty, which amaze the occasional visitor. The island was born during the Miocene period, about 25 million years ago, and became detached from Sardinia due to powerful tectonic movements. Many millions of years later, the island assumed its present morphology, which is predominantly flat.
The Romans, appeared in Sardinia in 238 BC. C. During Hadrian’s empire, (2nd century A.D.), furious persecutions were taking place toward Christians, who, in order not to be arrested and killed, emigrated to quieter lands. According to hagiographic legend, Antiochus, a Mauritanian physician, arrived on the coast of Sulci during the Christian purge to spread the faith of Christ, which quickly reached every nook and cranny of Sardinia. Here, his faith was received and accepted by the Sardinian people, but not by the persecutors who, having gone to Sulci to arrest him, found him already dead in the caves where he had gone to pray. News of the noble preacher’s death shocked the now evangelized Sardinian people. Religious works flourished in his honor throughout Sardinia, having recognized him as the first martyred apostle of Christianity on the great Sardinian island. And so it was that the territory of Sulci was renamed “Island of St. Antiochus,” and Antiochus, “Patron Saint of all Sardinia.
