The town is located approximately 50 km south of Olbia, in the administrative territory of Siniscola (province of Nuoro), on the Tyrrhenian coast of the island.
An ancient village of fishermen, its small gulf has been transformed in the 1970s into a touristic harbour, and recently renewed and enlarged. The town (est. 1,000 inhabitants, that become more than 10,000 in Summer) is today deeply dependent on tourism and borders, at its northern side, with San Giovanni, the coastal fraction of Posada.
La Caletta is in front of a well known beach (appr. 10 km of pure white sand) that ends in Santa Lucia.
Local population requires that La Caletta can have in its port a ferry line for the Continent (Italian mainland), and some experiments were practiced a few years ago, that confirmed the potential success of such an eventual initiative, but (also due to the particular administrative competence of an external organ and being part of the port under the authority of the bordering territory of Posada) administrative problems and local rivalries actually stop any further evolution in this sense.