2015 / Book / Documnetry (Non-Pro)

ma | re

  • Photographer
    Roberto Pireddu

Poetto is the town beach of Cagliari, the largest and most populous urban centre of Sardinia. This beach has always been the flagship of the city, with its fine and thin white sand, its crystal clear water and a sea bottom that allowed to the bathers to take a walk for tens of meters with the water at the level of the ankles. Going beyond the illegal development made by the kiosks on the beach and the apparent death condition affecting the seaboard (common discussions in Cagliari), anger, disappointment and resignation are the feelings remaining in the inhabitants of Cagliari at the sight of the show that the seafront nowadays offers. The generations of citizens who have been lucky to know the ancient beauty of the Poetto, guardians of testimonies and of a memory intended to remain so, now suffering looking back with bitterness at something no longer exists. Along the 8 kilometers and more of dark sand, currently, disharmonic beach resorts alternate with crumbling structures abandoned to themselves. Few years ago, furthermore, an unscrupulous attempt, trying to restore the old superfine white sand typical of the beach, has changed color and grain size of the strand creating a coast made by dark and very coarse sand. I wonder if new generation people can ever enjoy the Poetto in its former glory.