Sassari, “G.A. Sanna” National Museum

The building, home to the Giovanni Antonio Sanna National Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, is located within a vast plot with garden.
The building was donated by Zely Castoldi, daughter of Giovanni Antonio Sanna, the dealer of the Montevecchio mines, who in 1875 had allocated his archaeological and painting collection to his hometown. These today form the starting point of the museum that took its name from the entrepreneur.
The building, built between 1926 and 1932, is reminiscent of a classical temple and has an entrance with a short staircase in red vulcanite, set back from the road line. In the center there is a protruding body with Doric columns and a tympanum, while in the side wings, finished with faux smooth stone plaster, a ledge supports a parapet with coffered patterns containing raised rounds.
The interior has symmetric rooms, typical of the nineteenth-century museum concept, to which in 1966-73 the architect Giuseppina Marcialis added an extension, reusing some existing buildings and connecting the new rooms with a decidedly more articulated and modern trend.

History of studies
A review of 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
G. Lilliu, “Origin and History of the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari”, in The National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari, curated by V. Santoni, Cinisello Balsamo, A. Pizzi, 1989, pp. 11-20;
F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy to the end of the 1900s. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheet 25.