Santa Maria: the long beach, the Punta Filetto lighthouse and the natural pools

Santa Maria is where the boats stop to breathe. It sits at the northern edge of the La Maddalena Archipelago: roughly 2 km² of low scrub, one long pale beach where the water stays knee-deep for tens of metres, a scatter of private summer houses hidden behind the dunes and, immediately to the west, the shallow basin of Porto della Madonna. No ferries call, nothing is sold here, and you leave on the same hull that brought you.

This page covers what to expect at Cala Santa Maria, where the Punta Filetto lighthouse stands, how the swim stop at the natural pools actually works, and which tours include the island.

Cala Santa Maria, the long beach

The beach fills the head of a bay facing south-west, towards Budelli. It is the longest and the most forgiving on the minor islands: fine pale sand, a seabed that drops away gently, and room enough even with three or four boats anchored offshore. With children it is the right stop of the day, because you can stand up for a long way out and the swell barely reaches in.

Smaller boats put passengers ashore by tender or come alongside; the motor ships anchor in the bay and you go down the stern ladder, with a swim of a few dozen metres to the sand. Behind the beach sit the private houses inside their fences. The sand is public, the paths inland are not.

Insider tip: the sand at Cala Santa Maria gets hot and there is no shade whatsoever. If you plan to stay ashore for more than half an hour, bring a towel you can rig as an awning, or a wide-brimmed hat. Plenty of people head back to the boat early because of the sun rather than the water.

The Punta Filetto lighthouse

On the north-eastern tip, facing the Bocche di Bonifacio (the Strait of Bonifacio) and Corsica beyond, stands the Punta Filetto lighthouse: a white tower on a granite base, marking the northern entrance to the channel between Santa Maria and the coast. It is not open to visitors, but tours pass beneath it arriving from Santa Teresa Gallura or working their way round the island, and it is one of the more recognisable photographs of the day. From the beach you can pick it out by walking east along the rocky shore.

Porto della Madonna, the natural pools

West of the beach, in the gap between Santa Maria, Budelli and Razzoli, the seabed rises to within a few metres of the surface and forms a sheltered basin of pale sand. This is Porto della Madonna, also known as the Piscine naturali or Manto della Madonna, meaning the natural pools. It is the best-known swim stop in the archipelago and, on many itineraries, the longest. You swim straight off the boat, in water that reads pale green over the sand and deep blue over the bands of Posidonia seagrass; along the rocky edges towards Razzoli, sea bream drift past a metre down.

The catch is the crowd. Between 11 am and 1 pm in August, the boats from Palau, Santa Teresa, Cannigione and Baia Sardinia all converge on the same patch of water. Small-group trips get there earlier, afternoon departures later. On the Budelli shore opposite lies Spiaggia del Cavaliere and the marked path to the viewpoint over the Pink Beach, all of which is covered in our guide to Spiaggia Rosa on Budelli.

The private houses and the rules

Santa Maria is one of the few smaller islands with any buildings at all: a handful of houses used in summer, with no shops and no roads. There are no bars, no toilets and no sun loungers, and nobody will bring you a bottle of water. The boat is your base. According to the Parco Nazionale dell’Arcipelago di La Maddalena, the rules here are those of the whole archipelago: no sand, shells or pebbles taken home, no fires and no camping, drones only with authorisation, mooring on the buoys and never on the Posidonia. Anyone arriving on a hired boat needs the park’s navigation permit. The zoning and permits are summarised on our national park page.

Which tours stop at Santa Maria

Almost all of them, from every port. Here are the three we compare most often, with the figures from their GetYourGuide listings at the time of writing, September 2026.

The national park trip is the one to pick if you want to reach the coves ahead of the big boats and linger there; it costs more than the average but carries the highest rating of the Palau departures. The motor ship is the budget format out of Santa Teresa, with the Strait of Bonifacio crossing on the way over. The detail is on our page about boat tours from Santa Teresa Gallura. The four-stop trip is the most-booked classic from Palau, covered on the tours from Palau page.

Insider tip: if your itinerary includes both Santa Maria and the natural pools, ask the skipper which of the two stops will be the longer one. Use that for a proper swim and the other for photographs and snorkelling. Getting fully in the water twice within half an hour leaves most people cold and short of time to eat.

When to go

The tour season runs from April to the end of October, with daily departures from June to September. The shallows at Santa Maria warm up before anywhere else in the archipelago: by June the water is already pleasant, and in August it sits at 25–26 °C. The mistral is the risk. The bay faces south-west and stays sheltered even in a hard north-westerly, but the trip is still cancelled when the open water is unsafe, with a refund or a new date according to the GetYourGuide listings. June and September give the best balance of weather, water and numbers of people.

The short version

Santa Maria is the quiet stop in the La Maddalena Archipelago: the long beach with its shallow water, the Punta Filetto lighthouse at the far end of the coast, and the Porto della Madonna pools two minutes away by boat. To see it with fewer people around and more time ashore, check availability and prices for the small-group national park tour on GetYourGuide. For the rest of the group, start with the overview of the archipelago islands and the page on Razzoli, the wild neighbour across the water.