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CHAPTER 12
Cagliari
Rossana MartorelliHistoriography and History of the Archaeology of Cagliari
The first studies that appear on Cagliari date back to the sixteenth century.
During this period, the interest in antiquity produced a lot of books con-
cerning the origin of the city. One of them is the Panegyricus Caralis civibus
Caralitanis dictus, written perhaps before 1530 by Rodrigo Hunno Baeza (pos-
sibly Spanish or Sardinian) and included in the “Cartolari di Arborea” (papers
90–109, now in the public library of Cagliari). It was drawn up in the fourteenth
to fifteenth centuries, where many place names are mentioned, according to
the ideals of the cultural environment of the time, which aimed to celebrate
the ancient glory of the city.1 Even if it is a brief book and not of high liter-
ary quality, it is written in an academic style and it is important for the local
history.2 The author magnifies the origin of Cagliari by recounting that it was
founded by the mythical Aristeo and became the most important city of the
island;3 a very beautiful metropolis (although not large) he exalts its fame, its
people, the beauty of the site, its crowded harbor, the monuments, and finally
the gardens.4
Sigismondo Arquer, a very famous person in Caller, drew a map of the
town in 1548 for his book Sardiniae brevis historia descriptio, included in the
Cosmographia Universalis by Sebastiano Münster (1550). This map, the oldest
for Cagliari, shows its urban plan by the end of the medieval period, when
Cagliari was included in the Spanish kingdom (see infra Fig. 3.6a in Galoppini’s
chapter). It has been suggested that it had the form of an eagle: the head is
the district of Castello, the body is Llapola or Marina, the wings Stampace and
1 Maria Teresa Laneri, “Per la identificazione e la cronologia dell’umanista Rodrigo Hunno
Baeza,” Studi sardi XXXIII (2000), pp. 471–497.
2 Francesco Alziator, Storia della letteratura di Sardegna (Cagliari, 1982), p. 129.
3 Francesco Alziator, Il Caralis Panegyricus di Roderigo Hunno Baeza (Cagliari, 1954), pp. 22–23.
4 Alziator, Il Caralis Panegyricus, p. 53.