A Second home

A strong connection links the lands of Gallura to the events of a branch of my family, the maternal one.
At least three generations have lived in the places of this region in northern Sardinia, whose existence intertwines with some key events of the island’s history. My grandmother, originally from Tempio Pausania – the historic Gallura capital – and a lifelong resident of Rome, is an Anfossi whose ancestors migrated, for business reasons, from the French Riviera in the mid-19th century. The presumed “patriarch” of the family, a businessman from Cannes, was among the pioneers of the emerging cork trade between France and the then Kingdom of Sardinia. Over time, an industry developed that would become one of the rare local excellences of Sardinian entrepreneurship. Most likely, this Anfossi from across the Alps was her great-uncle.
Certainly, my grandmother had a father from southern France who worked, during the Fascist regime and the so-called “autarchic” period, on important infrastructural projects that changed the Sardinian landscape: the dams on the Tirso and Coghinas rivers.
Along with my grandmother’s stories of her childhood come those of her adulthood, of a still pristine Sardinia, of the “tanca” (farm) in Padulo sold to the Molinas cork family, and of when one could buy a house in Cala di Volpe with little money, before the arrival of the Aga Khan and the birth of the Costa Smeralda.
Thus, piecing together the fragments of this mosaic and traversing every corner of this land made of granite and dense Mediterranean scrub becomes an attempt to find my small island and Gallura space within my family tree.

Selections and awards:
2025 digital’s contribution for Boheme Magazine, curated by Francesca Occhi
2025 digital’s contribution for Almanac, a column by Fotografia dell’Architettura