"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)"