Cagliari

Cagliari is the capital of the Italian island and autonomous region of Sardinia. Cagliari is called Casteddu in sardinian language. It has about 165,000 inhabitants, or about 300,000 with its suburbs (metropolitan area).

Already a substantial Phoenician trading town, it passed with the rest of the island to Rome in 238 BCE. Subsequently ruled in turn by the Byzantine empire, Genoa, Pisa, Aragon, Spain and briefly Austria, it came under the duchy of Piedmont in 1720. From the 1870s the city experienced a century of rapid growth.