Cagliari, Boyl Palace

The palace is located on the line of the Pisan walls and incorporates a thirteenth-century tower.
Palazzo Boyl is one of the most representative noble buildings of the Cagliari Castle. It was built in 1840 by Carlo Pilo Boyl, Marquis of Putifigari, general of artillery and commander of the Royal Military Arsenal, belonging to a family of Catalan origin.
The palace was conceived according to the neoclassical forms in vogue in those years, which are also referred to as Porta Cristina and the entrance from the Royal Military Arsenal, also designed by the Marquis of Putifigari, in imitation of the Roman Porta Angelica and Piazza del Popolo.
The building has a marble balustrade adorned with four statues depicting the Seasons, while the coat of arms of the house is sculpted in the center. It contains the coat of arms of the Pilo family (a hand enclosing a bunch of hair, in Sardinian 'pilu'), the Boyl coat of arms (the bull, 'ox' in Sardinian) and the coat of arms of Aragon (red poles on a gold background). Below is the inscription commemorating the year the building was built: “COMES KAROLUS PILO BOYL EX BRAND PUTIFIGARI INSTAURAVIT ANNO MDCCCXL”.
The building incorporated a Pisan tower contemporary to those of San Pancrazio and dell'Elefante, by the architect Giovanni Capula. The tower had lost its upper part during the Spanish siege of 1717 and was almost reduced to a ruin. It had faced the British bombings of 1708, the Spanish guns that tried to take back the island in 1717 and finally the French attack of 1793. Three cannonballs fixed on the façade of the building recall the three attacks suffered. The castle was accessed through the tower. After passing the door, on the left side, upon close observation, you can see a Roman funerary stone, much blackened by time, which had been walled up in the tower together with other inscriptions unfortunately covered by ancient plaster. Since the end of the 19th century, the palace belonged to the family of the Rossi barons (as evidenced by the letter “R” carved in some windows overlooking the Bastion of Santa Caterina); now the Marche counts Tomassini Barbarossa own it.

Bibliography:
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 68.