municipalities-of-sardinia

"Caralis, stretches along the length and insinuates a small hill between the waves that breaks the opposite winds. In the middle of the sea a port is formed and in a large shelter, protected from all winds, the lagoon waters subside. (Claudius Claudianus, I, 520, 4th century B.C.E.)"

"Cagliari is very steep. In the middle there is a strange place called the ramparts, a wide flat space like a parade ground with trees, curiously suspended above the city, and from which an inclined plane starts, like a wide viaduct across the spiral road that climbs upwards. Above the ramparts, the city continues to climb steeply towards the Cathedral and the fortress. (David Herbert Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, C.E.1921)"

"Cagliari was different from the rest of the island. Since ancient times, it had been the stronghold of the rulers, and its heterogeneous population, made up of a mixture of races, held in contempt anyone who came from the countryside. Even Angelo, when he arrived in Cagliari, felt like a villager and, like all villagers, felt a sense of inferiority. In the city, he became as shy and vulnerable as he had been in a long time. (Giuseppe Dessì, Paese d'ombre, C.E.1972)"

"« What won you over about the people of Cagliari?» They are happy people with nothing. She has difficulty finding work, she does so much to receive little, yet she is generous, open, helpful. (Radja Nainggolan)"

"And suddenly there is Cagliari: a bare city that rises steep, steep, golden, stacked naked towards the sky from the plain at the beginning of the deep shapeless bay. It's strange and rather surprising, not at all like Italy. The city piles upwards, almost in miniature, and makes me think of Jerusalem: treeless, shelterless, standing bare and proud, remote as if it were back in history, like a city in a monk's illuminated missal. One wonders how he got there. It looks like Spain, or Malta: not Italy. (David Herbert Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, C.E.1921)"

"It is a beautiful city, rugged, stony, with changing colors among the rocks, the African plain, the lagoons, with a history all written and apparent in the stones, like the signs of time on a face: prehistoric and historical, capital of the Sardinians and colonial capital of the Aragonese and Piedmontese, one of the most destroyed by the bombings of the last war and, in just a few years, one of the most completely rebuilt. (Carlo Levi, All the honey is finished, C.E.1964)"

"Cold stone Cagliari: in summer you have to be scorching hot, Cagliari, like a furnace. (David Herbert Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, C.E.1921)"

"The summit of Cagliari is the fortress: the old gate, the old ramparts of beautiful yellowish sandstone in the shape of a honeycomb. The boundary wall rises with a wide curve, Spanish, splendid and vertiginous. (David Herbert Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, C.E.1921)"

"The Via Roma was crammed with people who did not quite understand where they were going, what they were doing at that sultry hour, while the sun, hidden behind heaps of clouds, lit it up yellow, red, orange, green, blue. Even the facades of the palaces and the highest towers of the castle with the crammed houses, stratified among the clumps of palm trees and agaves and the buttresses of the medieval ramparts, were tinged with those fantastic colors that would soon be extinguished, leaving the city under an amethyst sky. (Giuseppe Dessì, Paese d'ombre, C.E.1972)"

"But it still reminds me of Malta. Lost between Europe and Africa, it belongs nowhere. It belongs nowhere, having never belonged anywhere. To Spain and the Arabs and the Phoenicians, most of all. But as if he never really had a destiny. No fate. Left out of time and history. (David Herbert Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, C.E.1921)"

"Oh narrow, dark, damp streets leading up to the Cathedral, like fissures. By a hair's breadth I dodge a huge bucket of rinsing that falls down from the sky. A little boy who was playing in the street, whose dodge is not so clear-cut, looks up with that naïve, impersonal astonishment with which children look at a star or a lamppost. (David Herbert Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, C.E.1921)"

"David Herbert Lawrence, Mare e Sardegna, Ilisso, Nuoro C.E.2000. ISBN 88-87825-17-3"

"Carlo Levi, Tutto il miele è finito, Ilisso, Nuoro C.E.2003. ISBN 88-87825-71-8"

"Giuseppe Dessì, Paese d'ombre, Ilisso, Nuoro C.E.1998. ISBN 88-85098-79-7"

"National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari"