Bay of Alghero

The Bay of Alghero faces west from Sardinia toward the Balearic Islands across the Sea of Sardinia. This western Mediterranean basin separates the Italian island from the Spanish archipelago while giving both sides a shared maritime horizon. The water reaches a depth of roughly three thousand metres about 150 kilometres southeast of Menorca, traces that the routes between the coasts cross a basin whose seafloor drops well below the surrounding shelves. For a bay on Sardinia's western shore, that open water is a corridor as well as a boundary.

The International Hydrographic Organization regards the Sea of Sardinia as part of the generic Mediterranean Sea in the Western Basin, rather than recognising the label as a separate formal sea. The naming nevertheless captures a practical geography: ships moving between Sardinia and the Balearics cross this broad interval, and deep water lies close to the central passage. Alghero's bay belongs to a coastline where the island's interior meets a westward expanse of sea. Its importance lies in this relation between a sheltered local shore and the large marine space beyond, through which travellers and goods have moved across the western Mediterranean.