Cagliari’s Museum Citadel stands on a site which has undergone several transformations over the centuries. Under Spanish domination, the bastion of San Pancrazio was built and in the 1700s the Piedmontese erected buildings to house the Royal Armoury.
In 1970, to deal with the inadequacy of the Archaeological Museum in Piazza Indipendenza, overloaded with finds and no where near the modern developments of museography, Piero Gazzola and Libero Cecchini transformed the Royal Armoury into the current day Museum Citadel. The museum complex stands on the city’s acropolis in a particularly privileged spot and suitable for welcoming and housing Sardinia’s largest artistic collection. The architects concentrated on highlighting the environmental and landscape values of the place rather than on its purely architectural ones.
The layout of the buildings, created using concrete and stone, aims to re-use what is pre-existing with a desire to provide each building with its own separate identity. You can see a system of buildings positioned at different heights and linked by grass lawns in the open spaces.
The natural light modifies the interiors that creates the exhibiting atmosphere and they enjoy a minimalist style. The citadel is home to the Cagliari National Archaeological Museum with its numerous prehistoric finds from the Nuragic culture, the National Picture Gallery, the Ethnographic Museum, the Collection of Anatomical Waxes and theMuseum of Siamese Art.
