Cagliari

People have lived around Cagliari since the Neolithic, but the city began as Karaly, one of a string of Phoenician colonies founded in Sardinia around the 8th or 7th century BC, beside the lagoon of Santa Gilla. It grew under Carthage, which buried its dead in the great necropolis of Tuvixeddu, and passed to Rome in 238 BC, after the First Punic War. As Caralis it became the capital of Roman Sardinia, its naval station and the seat of its governor, with an amphitheatre carved into the hill.

After the Vandals and Byzantines it became, around 1020, the capital of the independent Judicate of Cagliari, centred on Santa Igia. In 1215 Pisan merchants founded the fortress of Castel di Castro on the hill; in 1258 Pisa and its allies destroyed Santa Igia, and Castello, Marina, Stampace and Villanova became the city. The Crown of Aragon besieged it from the hill of Bonaria in 1324–26, made it the capital of the new Kingdom of Sardinia and resettled Castello with Aragonese settlers. Spanish viceroys ruled from the Palazzo Regio, the bastions were strengthened, and in 1606 the university was founded.

Sardinia passed to the House of Savoy in 1718. Late in the 18th century a French revolutionary army landed at Poetto and was beaten back; when the Savoyards refused any concession in return, the people rose and expelled the Piedmontese officials. From the 1870s the city grew fast, gaining Art Nouveau streets and a white marble city hall under mayor Ottone Bacaredda. Allied bombing in February 1943 killed more than 2,000 people and damaged about 80 per cent of the buildings, and the city was awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour. It was rebuilt and spread towards Poetto and Monte Urpinu after the war.

The great day of Cagliari's year is 1 May, the feast of Sant'Efisio. During the plague of the 1650s the city vowed a procession to the saint if the epidemic ended, and it has walked every year since, even through the bombed streets of 1943. Thousands of people from folk groups across Sardinia, in traditional dress, escort the saint on an ox-drawn cart from Stampace to Nora, near Pula — about 70 kilometres of walking over four days, one of the oldest and longest religious processions in Italy. Carnival brings masks and floats to the beat of the ratantira drums in February.

The city's language is Sardinian in its Campidanese form, casteddaju, official alongside Italian, but Italian now dominates daily life and many young people only understand it. Writers have long been drawn here: D. H. Lawrence compared the white limestone city to a "white Jerusalem" in Sea and Sardinia, and Sergio Atzeni set many of his stories in ancient and modern Cagliari. Opera has a solid tradition, housed since 1993 in the Teatro Lirico, and the comic-book school founded by the creators of Nathan Never has worked here for decades.

Sport means Cagliari Calcio above all, champions of Italy in 1970 with Gigi Riva and now playing at the Unipol Domus. G.S. Amsicora has won more men's field hockey titles than any other Italian club, and steady winds make the gulf a centre for windsurfing, kitesurfing and sailing.

About 146,000 people live in the city itself and some 536,000 in the Metropolitan City of Cagliari. The population is old — almost a third of residents are over 65 — as younger families move to the suburbs. Immigrants make up about 7 per cent, the largest groups born in the Philippines, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Senegal and Kyrgyzstan.

As the regional capital, Cagliari lives largely from public administration, the courts and the university, founded in 1606, whose science faculties and hospital have moved to a new campus at Monserrato. Its port is among the busiest in Italy for freight, with a container terminal at Giorgino, and the metropolitan area holds the industrial zone of Macchiareddu and the Saras oil refinery at Sarroch. The Banco di Sardegna and the telecoms company Tiscali have their headquarters here, and with cruise ships and summer visitors, tourism is one of the major industries.

People live in the historic quarters, in the 20th-century districts of San Benedetto, Fonsarda, Bonaria and Monte Urpinu, and in Pirri, a former village of about 30,000 absorbed after the war. Cagliari is one of Italy's greenest cities, with large hill parks such as Monte Urpinu. In summer much of the city's life moves to Poetto, and evenings fill the bars of Stampace, Marina and Castello.

Unlike the rest of Sardinia, Cagliari's cuisine is built on the wide variety of local seafood, with traces of Catalan and Ligurian influence. The classic dishes include fregula cun cocciula, fregola with clams; cocciula e cozzas a schiscionera, clams and mussels cooked in a pan; sa burrida a sa casteddaia, catshark dressed with vinegar and walnuts; and sa cassola, a soup of fish, shellfish and molluscs.

Among the pasta dishes are malloreddus a sa campidanesa, spaghetti with clams and bottarga, and spaghittus cun arrizzonis, spaghetti with sea urchins, sometimes with artichokes or wild asparagus. Su mazzamurru is stale home-made bread cooked in sauce or broth and topped with grated pecorino. Main courses are mostly roast meats, and the best-known sweets, found across the island, are pardulas, seadas, candelaus and papassinu.

The San Benedetto market, one of the largest fish markets in Italy, supplies both restaurants and home cooks, and the old Marina quarter, especially Via Sardegna and Via Napoli, is where many of the city's trattorias cluster. Wines come from the nearby vineyards of the Campidano plain: Cannonau, Nuragus, Nasco, Monica, Moscau, Girò and Malvasia.