Santa Maria Navarrese

Santa Maria Navarrese is a coastal and tourist town, frazione ('district') of the municipality of Baunei, in the province of Nuoro, Sardinia.

According to tradition, the church was built on behalf of a princess of Navarra, hence the adjective Navarrese in the village's name.

The place is known also for a 17th-century watchtower built on the beach and for the thousand-year old oleasters in the main square.

Santa Maria Navarrese is also contiguous to the Tancau sul Mare frazione of Lotzorai and is part of a strip of Ogliastra's coastal settlements that stretches southwards to Tortolì and Arbatax.

The town remains outside most commercial tourist routes and thus still offers a rural unspoiled landscape that provides an insight in day-to-day Sardinian life and is interesting for nature trail tourism.