Visit the museums of Cagliari

Among exhibitions , museums , art galleries and galleries , Cagliari offers several interesting possibilities to tourists in search of art and culture .

Citadel of museums

Most of Cagliari's museums are currently housed in the premises of the modern museum complex known as the Citadel of Museums , in the Castello district . In this modern complex of buildings, built in the 1970s on the area that housed the Royal Arsenal (obtained from the old Savoyard Arsenal, on the area where the Spanish citadel stood), there are: the National Archaeological Museum , the National Art Gallery , the Collection of Anatomical Waxes "Clemente Susini" and the Civic Museum of Oriental Art "Stefano Cardu" .

National archeologic museum

Set up at the Cittadella dei Musei, it is the most important museum in the world for the Nuragic civilization .

Currently the museum is on three floors: the lower one traces the stages of the most ancient history of Sardinia, from the pre-Nuragic to the early medieval age, through exceptional archaeological finds: ceramics and small pre-Nuragic statuary, copper ingots, bronzes and nuragic ceramics, inscriptions, Phoenician ceramics and grave goods, stems (one of the most important collections in the world) and splendid Punic jewels, such as the famous Phoenician necklace in faiance (glass paste) composed of large pearls of which the central ones have the shape of bearded heads.

Of particular interest are the provenance from the necropolis of Nora and Tuvixeddu (objects of Punic production, or imported from Greece, Italy and Spain), the rich supply of ceramics, terracotta, Roman statues and sarcophagi, goldsmiths and coins from the early Middle Ages. The other two floors of the Museum house rooms dedicated to specific archaeological sites, such as the Su Nuraxi nuragic complex in Barumini.

National Picture Gallery

It collects, together with a small section of contemporary art and sculpture, canvases, coats of arms, sacred furnishings and a rich pictorial collection, as well as a significant ethnographic collection (fabrics, jewels, furniture, weapons, ceramics). The heart of the pictorial collection is made up of retables , large decorated and painted wooden structures that could be found behind the altars of churches: the retables of the Catalan painters J. Figuera, R. Thomas, J. Mates, J. Barcelo are preserved.

Others, the author of which is unknown, are attributed to the Maestro di Castelsardo and the Maestro di Sanluri. Another important nucleus of the pictorial collection is represented by the works of the painters of the so-called "School of Stampace" , which takes its name from the Cagliari district where for a century and a half the workshops of the family of Pietro Cavaro, initiator of the movement, and of the his followers. By Pietro Cavaro are preserved: the "Deposition", "Sant'Agostino", "S. Pietro", "S. Paolo", "S. Agostino in Cattedra".

In another group of precious works we find the "Flight into Egypt", a Flemish panel from the end of the 16th century. and a "Madonna with Child" by a mannerist painter of the sixteenth century.

Collection of "Susini" Anatomical Waxes

It exhibits 23 anatomical wax models , created by the Florentine sculptor Clemente Susini. The models, obtained from plaster casts for anatomical finds, meticulously reproduce (with mixtures of colored wax, resins, tallow, pitch and balms) the different parts of the human body in section.

Stefano Cardu Civic Museum of Oriental Art

It exhibits a large part of the collection of 1300 pieces donated to the municipality in 1917 by Stefano Cardu, a Cagliari who lived in the court of the king of Siam. It includes paintings on silk, gold and silver coins, ivory statues, porcelain and weapons from Siam, Laos, Celebes, Java, Malacca, Singapore, China and mostly dating back to the 11th century century.

Other museums in Cagliari

Capitular Museum

It preserves the most important works of the Cathedral Treasury : amphorae, chalices, chiseled plates, and a large fifteenth-century cross in gilded silver.

Municipal Art Gallery

It contains the works of the most significant Sardinian artists between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He recently acquired the Ingrao Collection , which includes over 650 works by Italian artists that belonged to the Sardinian lawyer of the same name.

Among the names that make up the collection are: Angelo Inganni, who opens the exhibition with a splendid Portrait of a Lady, the futurists Balla, Depero, Severini and Umberto Boccioni, present with 31 works. Mario Sironi, Ardengo Soffici, Filippo De Pisis, Giorgio Morandi and Ottone Rosai represent the return to the twentieth-century order after the avant-garde climate. Felice Casorati, Mario Mafai and Mino Maccari's expressionist lighting complete the picture.

Cabinet of Prints

It includes a series of nineteenth-century photomechanical reproductions and engravings by Sardinian artists of the twentieth century.

Piloni Collection

In the atrium of Palazzo Belgrano there is the collection of Sardinian works of art and craftsmanship donated to the University in 1981 by Luigi Piloni: it includes paintings, prints, lithographs, etchings, geographical maps, silver and carpets produced between the 16th and XX century, which find their common denominator in the reference to Sardinia.

Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography

In via Porcell, the University's Institute of Anthropological Sciences houses the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, with costumes and objects from Sardinian folklore .