Gaetano Cima

In the history of Sardinian architecture, the architect Gaetano Cima occupies an absolutely important place, as evidenced by the fact that he effectively played a teaching role in the second half of the nineteenth century both as a professor at the University of Cagliari and, more generally, for the exemplary effectiveness of the products of his professional activity, hired by many contemporary architects as more or less explicit models.

The architect Gaetano Cima was born in Cagliari in 1805 and died in the same hometown in 1878. He was the first Sardinian architect to undertake regular studies in Turin, which were later expanded and completed at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. His training path, which we can define without hesitation as “canonical”, was certainly decisive in giving his activity a clear imprint of professional rigor.

After completing his training period, he began his collaboration with the public administration, in particular as a collaborator of Cominotti in Civil Engineering, and as director of the Technical Office of the Municipality of Cagliari. These commitments, of considerable responsibility, at the same time represent important opportunities for professional growth for Gaetano Cima, also due to the extraordinary historical situation in which he finds himself operating in Cagliari, when the city is faced with new and crucial issues, such as the redefinition of its political role at the “national” level, its status as a maritime stronghold and a port city open to Mediterranean horizons, a center of commercial exchange and therefore the potential hub of a vast region.

He built or partially intervened on churches (San Giacomo di Cagliari, the parish church of the Mother of God of Guasila, Saint Francis of Oristano), palaces and noble villas with Palladian canons (Villa Santa Maria in Pula, owned by the Cugia family, and Villa Aymerich in Laconi), theaters (the civic theater of Cagliari, which was destroyed in the bombings of 1943). But his most important work was the monumental Civil Hospital of Cagliari, in a strictly neoclassical style, very modern for the time (1842).

Cima's work in the urban planning field was also fundamental. Cagliari's urban planning project, defined with changes after 1861, saw as emerging architectural elements the town hall, in tasty Art Nouveau style, and the neoclassical Umberto I terrace, built on the site of the demolished bastion of St. Remy.

In summary, it is possible to say that Gaetano Cima, operating under the banner of an architectural figure marked by calm rationalism, soon became an authoritative point of reference in the field of island architecture.

Update

10/9/2023 - 15:51