Subjects
Subjects
The multifunctional cultural complex “Citadel of Museums” is located at the N/W end of the Castello district, in an area already used as a military fortification in the 14th century, converted at the beginning of the 19th century into a Royal Arsenal. In 1870 it became a Military District, and, finally, it was semi-destroyed during the aerial bombardments suffered by the city in 1943.
It currently houses the National Archaeological Museum, the Stefano Cardu Civic Museum of Siamese Art, the Collection of Anatomical Waxes by Clemente Susini, the National Art Gallery.
In the middle of the twentieth century, on the initiative of the University of Studies, it was decided to expand the headquarters of the Archaeological Museum and the Pinacoteca, into a multipurpose center for the study of “Sardinian arts and history”.
The project by the architects Pietro Gazzola and Libero Cecchini had long and complex events since 1956, with a new proposal (1964) that varied some parts up to yet another reworking with the use of wall structures of historical and archaeological importance incorporated into the museum complex. The end of the long works dates back to 1979 with a real use of space that was still later and diluted over time.
The basic idea tends to merge the exceptional nature of ancient parts with the needs of a modern multipurpose center, thanks to particular attention to the relationship between new construction interventions and pre-existing ones, and to the use of square blocks of local stone (Bonaria limestone) and exposed concrete walls.
After passing the neoclassical entrance door of the ancient Arsenal (1825), closed by the bronze doors of the sculptors M. Salazzari and R. Cassini (1979), you can see a first group of buildings: on the left the service rooms, on the right the former prisons of San Pancrazio and the gallery for temporary exhibitions (with the “pentagonal room” that houses the Museum of Anatomical Waxes “Clemente Susini”) and more on the Department of Archaeological and Historic-Artistic Sciences of the University of Studies (which includes the eighteenth century environment Of the chapel of the arsenal, with a sculpted limestone portal and a sculptural group of Santa Barbara above it). At the center is the building that has housed the National Archaeological Museum since 1993. Going up through the stairways or tracks accessible to the disabled, you reach a sloping “garden” with the entrance to the Municipal Museum of Siamese Art, next to which there are the Regional Ethnographic Museum and the National Art Gallery, structured on three levels.
A “panoramic walk”, now no longer passable, starts from the belvedere to the east of the temporary exhibition room, continues “covered” under the premises of the University Department to the entrance of the Municipal Museum and continues in N/E, reaching the turret that replaced the ancient seventeenth-century windmill.
History of studies
A review of the studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the fact sheet in the volume of the “History of Art in Sardinia” on nineteenth-century architecture (2001).
Bibliography by
P. Gazzola-L. Cecchini, The Museum Citadel of Sardinia in Cagliari, University of Cagliari, Lonigo, 1981;
T.K. Kirova, “The Culture of Restoration”, in Cagliari Historic Districts. Castello, Cinisello Balsamo, A. Pizzi, 1985, pp. 164, 170-171;
P. Corona, “The Citadel of the Museums of Cagliari: evolutionary analysis of a defensive system”, in Cagliari. Homage to a city, Oristano, S'Alvure, 1990, pp. 103-145;
G. Loddo, Guide to the Contemporary Architecture of Cagliari 1945-1995, Cagliari, Coedisar, 1996, pp. 54, 77; F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy to the End of the 20th Century. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheet 159.
Content type:
Fortified architecture
Province: Cagliari
Common: Cagliari
Macro Territorial Area: South Sardinia
POSTAL CODE: 09124
Address: piazza Arsenale, 1
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Cagliari, Cittadella dei Musei Images number: 1
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