The Duomo of Cagliari, or rather, the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and Santa Cecilia was built in the XIII century under the House of Pisa domination. Following their settlement on the hill known as Castel di Castro, the rulers from the House of Pisa felt the need to erect a church to commemorate the duomo in their homeland.
The original layout of three naves with transept has basically remained unaltered. What has changed are the aesthetic features in Pisan Romanesque style which have been changed and updated down through the centuries.
The right and left arms of the transept and the first chapel next to the presbytery, created in the XIV century have Catalan Gothic features. The presbytery, on the other hand, is in Baroque style. In 1618, the archbishop Francisco Desquivel decided to have the presbytery raised in order to house the Baroque Cripta dei Martiri.
The Baroque facade, demolished in the early 1900s, was rebuilt in Neo-Romanesque style between 1927 and 1930 from a project by the architects Giarrizzo and Vicario. Only the architrave carved in Acanthus volutes on the main portal has survived from the original Romanesque style facade.
The cathedral houses Guglielmo’s pulpit, now split into two marble ambons created by Master Guglielmo for the duomo of Pisa (1159-1162) and donated to the city in 1312 by the Opera del Duomo di Pisa; the marble altars of San Isidoro (1683), San Michele (1727), San Cecilia (1780), the Altarpiece of the Beneficiati (1527-1530) connected to the workshop of Pietro Cavaro who produced the wooden Cross, the Monument to Martino il Giovane produced in Genoa by the sculptor Giulio Aprile in 1676 and the pictorial arrangement of the vaults produced by the local artist Filippo Figari. Lastly, the so-called Madonna nera, attributable to the XIV century and the work of a sculptor originally from Catalonia, who was inspired by the Virgin in the cathedral in Palma de Mallorca.
