CAGLIARI
 
 
 
Viewing Cágliari from the sea at the start of his Sardinian sojourn in 1921, D.H. Lawrence compared it to Jerusalem: "& strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like Italy". Today, still crowned by an old centre squeezed within a protective ring of Pisan fortifications, CÁGLIARI is less frenetic than any town of equivalent size on the mainland, with a population of nearly a quarter of a million spread around its modern outskirts in mushrooming apartment blocks. Its setting is enhanced by the calm lagoons ( stagni ) behind the city and along the airport road, the habitat for cranes, cormorants and flamingos. In the centre, the evening promenades along Via Manno are the smartest you'll see in Sardinia, dropping down to the noisier Piazza Yenne and Largo Carlo Felice, around which most of the shops, restaurants, banks and hotels are located. At the bottom of the town, the arcades of Via Roma shelter shops and bars, in between which African and Asian traders jostle for pavement space.

The City
Almost all the wandering you will want to do in Cágliari is encompassed within the old quarter, known as Castello. The most evocative entry to this is from the monumental Bastione San Remy on Piazza Costituzione, whose nineteenth-century imperialist tone is watered down by the graffiti and weeds sprouting out of its walls. It's worth the haul up the grandiose flight of steps inside for Cágliari's best views over the port and the lagoons beyond. Sunset is a good time to be here, or whenever you feel like a pause from sightseeing-fatigue, its shady benches conducive to a twenty-minute siesta.

From the bastion, you can wander off in any direction to enter the intricate maze of Cágliari's citadel, traditionally the seat of the administration, aristocracy and highest ecclesiastical offices. It has been little altered since the Middle Ages, though the tidy Romanesque facade on the Cattedrale (daily 8am-12.30pm & 4-8pm) in Piazza Palazzo is in fact a fake, added in this century in the old Pisan style. The structure dates originally from the thirteenth century but has gone through what Lawrence called "the mincing machine of the ages, and oozed out Baroque and sausagey".

Inside, a couple of massive stone pulpits flank the main doors: they were crafted as a single piece around 1160 to grace Pisa's cathedral, but were later presented to Cágliari along with the same sculptor's set of lions, which now adorn the outside of the building. Other features of the cathedral that are worth a glance include the ornate seventeenth-century tomb of Martin II of Aragon (in the left transept), the aula capitolare (off the right transept), containing some good religious art, and, under the altar, a densely adorned crypt . Hewn out of the rock, little of this subterranean chamber has been left undecorated, and there are carvings by Sicilian artists of the Sardinian saints whose ashes were said to have been found under the church of San Saturno in 1617. Also here are the tombs of the wife of Louis XVIII of France, Marie-Josephine of Savoy, and the infant son of Vittorio Emanuele I of Savoy and Maria-Teresa of Austria, Carlo Emanuele, who died in 1799.

The cathedral stands in one corner of the square, flanked by the eighteenth-century Palazzo Viceregio (Tues-Sun: May-Sept 9.30am-1.30pm & 4-8pm; Oct-April 9am-1pm & 3-7pm; L4000/¬2.07), or Governor's Palace - formerly the palace of the Piemontese kings of Sardinia, though rarely inhabited by them, its stately rooms today holding regular exhibitions - and by the graceful archbishop's palace, both the work of the same architect, Davisto, in 1769.

At the opposite end of Piazza Palazzo a road leads into the smaller Piazza Indipendenza, location of the Torre San Pancrazio , one of the main bulwarks of the city's defences erected by Pisa after it had wrested the city from the Genoans in 1305 (though these did not prevent the Aragonese from walking in just fifteen years later). It's worth ascending the tower (Tues-Sun: May-Sept 9.30am-1.30pm & 4-8pm; Oct-April 9am-1pm & 3-7pm, last admissions 15min before closing; free) for the magnificent views seawards over the old town and port. From here it's only a short walk to Via dell'Università and the city's second major bulwark, the Torre dell'Elefante (same hours as above), named after a small carving of an elephant on one side. Like the other tower, it has a half-finished look, with the side facing the old town completely open.

Through the arch at the top of Piazza Indipendenza, Piazza dell'Arsenale holds a plaque recording the visit made by Cervantes to Cágliari in 1573, shortly before his capture and imprisonment by Moorish pirates. Across the square, the Cittadella dei Musei stands on the site of the former royal arsenal, housing the city's principal museums. The main attraction is the Museo Archeologico (Tues-Sun: April-Sept 9am-2pm & 3-8pm; Oct-March 9am-7pm; L5000/¬2.58), a must for anyone interested in Sardinia's past. The island's most important Phoenician, Carthaginian and Roman finds are gathered here, including busts and statues of muses and gods, jewellery and coins, and funerary items from the sites of Nora and Tharros. But everything pales beside the museum's greatest pieces, from Sardinia's nuraghic culture. Of these, the most eye-catching is a series of bronze statuettes, ranging from about thirty to ninety centimetres in height, spindly and highly stylized but packed with invention and quirky humour. The main source of information about this phase of the island's history, these figures represent warriors and hunters, athletes, shepherds, nursing mothers, bulls, horses and wild animals. Most were votive offerings, made to decorate the inside of temples, later buried to protect them from the hands of foreign predators.

The other museums contrast wildly with each other, but each is worth exploring. The smallest and most surprising is the Mostra di Cere Anatomiche (daily 9am-1pm & 4-7pm; free), which displays 23 wax models of anatomical sections, gruesome reproductions of works made by the Florentine Clemente Susini at the start of the nineteenth century. Further up, the Museo d'Arte Siamese (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm & 4-8pm; L4000/¬2.07) holds a fascinating assemblage of items from Southeast Asia - the collection of a local engineer who spent twenty years in the region - including Siamese paintings of Hindu and Buddhist legends, Chinese bowls and boxes, Japanese statuettes and a fearsome array of weaponry. Lastly, the excellent Pinacoteca (daily 8.30am-7pm; L4000/¬2.07) contains mostly Catalan and Italian religious art from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Look out in particular for the trio of panel paintings next to each other on the top level: the panel frame of San Bernardino by Joan Figuera and Rafael Thomas, Annunciation by Joan Mates, and Visitation by Joan Barcelo.

Turning right out of Piazza dell'Arsenale, Viale Buon Cammino leads to Viale Fra Ignazio and the entrance to the Anfiteatro Romano (Tues-Sun: April-Oct 9am-1pm & 3.30-7.30pm; Nov-March 9am-5pm; free). Cut out of solid rock in the second century AD, the amphitheatre could hold the entire city's population of about 20,000. Despite the decay, with much of the site cannibalized to build churches in the Middle Ages, you can still see the trenches for the animals, the underground passages and several rows of seats. Turning left out of the amphitheatre, walk a few minutes down Viale Fra Ignazio da Laconi to the Botanical Gardens (daily: April and mid-Sept to Oct 8am-1.30pm & 3-6.30pm; May to mid-Sept 8am-1.30pm & 3-8pm; Nov-March 8am-1.30pm; L1000/¬0.52), one of Italy's most famous, with over 500 species of Mediterranean and tropical plants - a shady spot on a sizzling afternoon.

Heading east from the centre, there is little to see in Cágliari's traffic-thronged modern quarters beyond the banks and businesses, the one exception being the fifth-century church of San Saturno (Mon-Sat 9am-1pm), Sardinia's oldest and one of the most important surviving examples of early Christian architecture in the Mediterranean. Stranded on the busy Via Dante close to the FdS station on Piazza Repubblica, looking Middle Eastern with its palm trees and cupola, the basilica was erected on the spot where the Christian martyr Saturninus met his fate during the reign of Diocletian. Around the sturdy walls, which withstood severe bombardment during World War II, lie various pieces of flotsam from the past: four cannonballs, fragments of Roman sarcophagi and slabs of stone carved with Latin inscriptions. The interior is bare of decoration, though it's nonetheless impressive, with tall glass walls added to the sides, through which you can see an excavated necropolis.