The sign on the land says “for sale”, not “buildable”, and the difference can be devastating.
The question that brings a reader to this page is essentially this: that plot of land with a sea view, in Sardinia — can you build on it? In the great majority of cases the answer is no. Italian national law places all coastal land within 300 metres of the shoreline under landscape protection [1], but in Sardinia the protected band is considerably wider than that, because the Piano Paesaggistico Regionale (Regional Landscape Plan) of 2006 classifies the entire coastal belt as a single protected landscape asset and, on land that is currently undeveloped, prohibits any transformation whatsoever, subject to a short list of express exceptions in which new residential building does not appear [2].
What almost always escapes buyers arriving from abroad is that the coastal belt defined by the regional plan does not coincide with the 300 metres. It is a boundary drawn on the plan's own maps, district by district, and in several parts of the island it runs kilometres inland, following ridgelines and visual basins rather than a fixed distance. The Constitutional Court has said so in plain terms: the coastal belt protected as a unitary asset extends well beyond the 300 metres covered by national law [3]. The real question, then, is not how far the land is from the sea but which side of the boundary it falls on — and the only thing that answers it is laying the cadastral parcel over the plan's cartography, not the estate agent's listing.
The cartography is public and anyone can consult it, yet almost nobody looks at it before signing.
In my practice the problem arrives in the same order every time, and generally the wrong one. First the deposit, paid at the height of summer on a piece of agricultural land with a for-sale sign and a half-collapsed fence, on the agent's word that a small house can be built there. Then, weeks later, the certificato di destinazione urbanistica, the zoning certificate the notary requests in order to prepare the deed. It is in that document that the buyer first reads the words agricultural zone E, coastal belt, and sometimes a third expression that nobody had ever said aloud: usi civici.
Outside the coastal belt the question moves to agricultural zone E, where residential building is permitted at a building index of 0.03 cubic metres for every square metre of land, on a minimum plot of one hectare [7]. The arithmetic is simple, and anyone can run it on the land they are considering. A plot of 10,000 square metres therefore yields 300 cubic metres: with an internal height of three metres, a building of roughly 100 square metres. On a plot of 3,000 square metres the result is zero, because below the minimum plot size the index does not apply at all. And inside the coastal belt, on undeveloped land, the calculation never begins.
Usi civici (collective use rights held by local communities) are the most treacherous variable, because they are invisible. Large parts of the island, including areas close to the coast, are collective lands burdened by these rights: by law they cannot be sold, cannot be acquired by adverse possession, and are bound in perpetuity to agricultural, forestry and pastoral use [8]. A sale that touches them is exposed to nullity, and the seller himself may be unaware of the burden in perfect good faith, because it does not show up in an ordinary cadastral search but in regional surveys and municipal inventories. In several coastal municipalities, moreover, those surveys are still under way, and the answer from the offices takes weeks that must be budgeted for before the preliminary contract, not after completion. The check itself is reasonably quick; skipping it puts the entire purchase price at risk.
Sellers, and those who broker for them, often object that the rules are about to change. The objection rests on the wrong facts. Regional Law 18 of 2025, which reorganised Sardinian building law and partially transposed the national decree known as Salva Casa, was challenged by the national government, and the Constitutional Court, in two judgments filed between May and June 2026, struck out substantial parts of it: the definitions of building irregularity based on rigid quantitative thresholds, the exemption of volumetric extensions within the existing envelope from the building permit, and retrospective authorisation in areas under hydrogeological constraint [4][5][6]. In the meantime the Region has opened the procedure to update the landscape plan, launched in June 2026 with territorial hearings.
The script, for that matter, has been running for more than fifteen years. Regional derogation laws — the piani casa and the extensions tied to a future law on land governance — have ended up before the Constitutional Court again and again, and judgment 24 of 2022 annulled the latest extension precisely on the ground that an indefinite succession of deferrals interferes with landscape protection [3]. In twelve months the legal framework has changed three times, and each time the point of arrival has been the restoration of national protection, not its loosening. Buying today on the bet of a future liberalisation means paying for a hectare of Mediterranean scrub at the price of a building plot.
None of this means that nothing gets built in Sardinia any more. Inside urban centres, building follows the municipal urban plan, and what can be done depends on the zoning of the parcel, not on the view. Existing buildings can be worked on: the recovery and reuse of stazzi (the traditional rural farmsteads) and other country buildings is the channel through which most of the houses near the sea that actually get built come into being, with the limit, after judgment 86 of 2026, that a volumetric increase, even within the existing envelope, requires a building permit, not a simple notification. For anyone who wants a house on the coast, the realistic route is almost always an existing building to restore, not bare land to build on.
The operating instruction, before signing any preliminary contract for land: obtain an up-to-date certificato di destinazione urbanistica, have a surveyor overlay the parcel on the landscape plan's cartography, and ask the municipality and the Region for certification on the existence of usi civici. Three documents and a few hundred euros, against a deposit ordinarily worth a thousand times as much.
Sources
[1] Article 142(1)(a) of the Codice dei beni culturali e del paesaggio (Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape), Legislative Decree 42 of 22 January 2004.
[2] Piano Paesaggistico Regionale of Sardinia, approved by Regional Government Resolution 36/7 of 5 September 2006 — Technical Implementation Rules, Articles 19 and 20.
[3] Constitutional Court, judgment 24/2022.
[4] Sardinian Regional Law 18 of 17 June 2025 (reorganisation and coordination of regional building and planning legislation).
[5] Constitutional Court, judgment 86/2026.
[6] Constitutional Court, judgment 100/2026.
[7] Regional planning decree 2266/U of 20 December 1983 (planning standards for agricultural zones in Sardinia).
[8] Law 168 of 20 November 2017 (collective land domains), Article 3(3).
Agostino Galizia — chartered accountant and statutory auditor in Cagliari, Sardinia. Registered with the Ordine dei Dottori Commercialisti ed Esperti Contabili di Cagliari, no. 1330/A, and with the Italian register of statutory auditors, no. 80487.
Offer
For readers evaluating a specific plot, my firm carries out a preliminary buildability check on the individual parcel: obtaining the zoning certificate, overlaying the parcel on the landscape plan’s cartography, and certification on the existence of usi civici, with a written closing report. Scope and a fixed fee are agreed in writing before the engagement begins.
Disclaimer
This article is for information only and does not constitute professional advice. Every actual situation requires specific analysis.
