Sardinia historical timeline

The Nuragic civilisation

From around 1800 BC, the people of Sardinia built nuraghi — conical drystone towers, some standing alone, others grown into fortified complexes with villages around them. About 7,000 survive; the original number was probably far higher. Su Nuraxi di Barumini, UNESCO-listed in 1997, is the most complete.

They also left tombe dei giganti (collective burials), sacred wells built with precise stonework, and thousands of small bronze figures — the bronzetti — showing archers, wrestlers, chieftains and ships. They left no writing at all, so almost everything about their society is inference.

Phoenicians, Carthage and Rome

Phoenician traders founded coastal cities from the 9th century BC — Nora, Tharros, Sulci — and Carthage took control in the 6th. Rome annexed the island in 238 BC after the First Punic War and held it for seven centuries, but Roman authority never extended far into the mountains: the Romans called the interior Barbaria, which is why it is still called the Barbagia.

The Giudicati

The island's most distinctive political period. After Byzantine control faded, Sardinia organised itself from around the 9th century into four independent Giudicati — judicates — self-governing states with their own laws, unique in medieval Europe.

Eleonora of Arborea, who ruled the last of them in the late 14th century, promulgated the Carta de Logu, a legal code written in Sardinian covering property, criminal law and, unusually for the period, the rights of women. It remained in force until 1827.

Aragon, Spain and Savoy

The Crown of Aragon claimed the island in 1323 and took four decades to subdue it. Alghero was repopulated with Catalans, and the town has spoken Catalan ever since. Spanish rule followed, then in 1720 the island passed to the House of Savoy, who took from it the royal title of the Kingdom of Sardinia — the state that would eventually unify Italy, governed from Turin rather than Cagliari.

Modern Sardinia

The 20th century brought malaria eradication in the late 1940s, which opened the coasts to settlement, and the development of the Costa Smeralda from 1962. Sardinia holds special autonomous status within Italy, with its own statute and legislative powers, and the Sardinian language has official recognition.

What is visible now

Nuraghi in open fields, Phoenician and Roman ruins at the water's edge, Pisan Romanesque churches, Catalan Gothic in Alghero, Spanish bastions above Cagliari, and abandoned mining infrastructure across the Sulcis.