Cagliari 317
and was mostly focused on creating a statistical census and understanding the
economic and military status of the island.
In 1799, Giuseppe Cossu included a short description of Cagliari and its
monuments in the Descrizione geografica della Sardegna.12 The study of the
city is very similar to the descriptions of the previous centuries and did not
add any significant information about its history. Foreign visitors started trav-
eling to the island only at the beginning of nineteenth century. Antoine Claude
Pasquin Valery studied and described Cagliari, focusing on the late antique
period.13 In 1824, the Piedmontese general Alberto Ferrero Della Marmora (or
Lamarmora) was exiled to Sardinia because of his politically liberal ideals.
Thus he wrote the Voyage en Sardaigne, perhaps the most famous travel diary
of the nineteenth century. His text is a geological and political description of
the island, based on detailed analysis of the country and the antiquities that
he visited between 1819 and 1824. The first chapter of the second book, in par-
ticular, is dedicated to Karales/Karalis.14 The Itinéraire de l’île de Sardaigne,15 a
sort of travel guide, includes the most important sites of the island. The start
of the first chapter is reserved for Cagliari, which the author knew very well as
he had briefly ruled the city as the Extraordinary Royal Commissioner in 1849.16
Other local historiography includes several studies. Vittorio Angius, an
eclectic scholar, who studied history, statistics, geography, folklore, natural sci-
ences, and agricultural economy, worked together with Goffredo Casalis for
the Dizionario geografico-storico-statistico-commerciale degli Stati di S.M. il Re
di Sardegna, especially on the chapters concerning the island. He deepened
his archaeological knowledge by studying written sources and visited Sardinia
between 1832 and 1848. The third book, published in 1836, was about history
and urbanism of ancient and modern Cagliari. Even if this study has an en-
cyclopedic style, it touches every monument of the town, a photograph of a
very different situation to today.17Another important source is an “erudite” his-
tory of the first half of nineteenth century, written to reveal the identity of the
island through its past. The information about the city followed the ideas of
12 Descrizione geografica della Sardegna del cav. d. Giuseppe Cossu socio di diverse accademie
(Genova, 1799).
13 Antoine Claude Pasquin Valery, Voyages en Corse, a l’île d’Elbe, et en Sardaigne (Paris, 1837);
Maria Grazia Longhi, ed., Viaggio in Sardegna (Nuoro, 1996).
14 Alberto Ferrero Della Marmora, Voyage in Sardaigne, I (Torino, 1826).
15 Alberto Ferrero Della Marmora, Itinerario dell’isola di Sardegna, trans. Can. Spano
(Cagliari, 1868).
16 Della Marmora, Itinerario dell’isola di Sardegna, I, p. 21.
17 Vittorio Angius, s.v. “Cagliari,” in Dizionario geografico storico-statistico-commerciale degli
stati di S. M. il re di Sardegna, III, ed. G. Casalis (Torino, 1836), pp. 24–281.