Cagliari

Cagliari is a municipality and the capital and largest city of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. It has about 145,981 inhabitants, and its metropolitan city, which takes in 69 other nearby municipalities, has about 536,245. The city is an ancient settlement with continuous human presence over some five thousand years, and its historical sites include prehistoric Domus de Janas, a Carthaginian necropolis, a Roman amphitheatre, a Byzantine basilica, three Pisan-era towers and a system of fortifications built under Spanish Habsburg rule. Cagliari was the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia from 1324 to 1848. Today it is a regional cultural, educational, political and economic centre with one of the largest ports in the Mediterranean, and it is the seat of the University of Cagliari, founded in 1606.