When the sun sets and the sea turns to liquid silver, then it happens: From the tranquil blue, the rock rises – not like a foreign body, but like a thought of the earth turned to stone. Pan di Zucchero, or Sugarloaf, they call it, and indeed: There it stands, as if licked by the sky and washed by the sea, round and proud, as if watching over the Sardinian coast.
The last rays of day creep over its limestone walls, licking firmly at the edges, casting both shine and shadow. In this light, it glows – not garishly, not obtrusively, but like something that remembers: the millennia of the sea, the silence beneath the water, the spray of geologists, birds, wind, and the hand of man who searched for ore and dug veins nearby.
A monument that demands nothing. It simply stands there – and is contemplated. From Masua, one approaches, on foot or by boat, with the rocks on the right and the open blue on the left. Those who take the path will be rewarded with views that are out of the ordinary. Those who choose the boat will be amazed: by the grottos that dig into the base like eyes, by the almost outrageous height – 133 meters rising vertically from nothing.
And then, in the late afternoon, when the sun is low and the rocks are silent, something else happens: Sugarloaf Mountain begins to tell its story. About the time when it was still connected to the mainland. About its little brothers – Il Morto, S'Agusteri – that stand lost in the sea. And about all the seagulls that circle as if they had invented the place.
No photo, no filter can replace this moment: the whisper of the wind, the salty air, the light that forgets the sky. You stand there and are silent. And the rock – it remains. As if it had always been there. And always would be.