The National Museums of Cagliari, including the Archaeological Museum, the Pinacoteca, the Spazio San Pancrazio, the former Royal Museum and the spaces of Porta Cristina, are a MiC (Ministry of Culture) Institute with special autonomy since 2019.
The museums are located in the ancient Castello district, within the Citadel of Museums built between 1956 and 1979 with the recovery of the royal Arsenal and medieval walls designed by architects Libero Cecchini and Piero Gazzola.
The museum heritage is rich and varied, including the archaeological collection, the pictorial collection, the ethnographic collection, consisting of jewels, baskets, fabrics, weapons, furniture and the stone collection.
The National Museums of Cagliari share their aims and mission with the definition of the Museum given by ICOM:
“A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment”.
The National Museums of Cagliari are a liquid museum, a museum that is transformed to be more and more inclusive, from every point of view: physical, sensorial, cognitive, digital.
They are a space for children, the elderly, foreigners, for the disabled, and therefore multiform and liquid, able to take on different shapes and sizes to meet the needs of each visitor.
Here the use of sustainable and renewable technologies is aimed at promoting knowledge of its heritage.
They are a museum that is committed to growing together with its visitors, to make the museum story a unique experience that becomes a habit. They are also a social space within the city, which promotes events, educational and recreational activities.
Their mission is to preserve and tell the cultural heritage of Sardinia, being strongly aware of its function of connection with the territory and with the rest of the world, especially with what overlooks the shores of the Mediterranean, a meeting of cultures and peoples.
This is where Fernand Braudel’s phrase acquires meaning:
“What are the Mediterranean? “a thousand things together. Not a landscape but countless landscapes. Not a sea, but a session of seas. Not a civilisation, but a series of civilisation stacked on top of each other. Travelling in the Mediterranean means meeting the Roman world in Lebanon, prehistory in Sardinia, the Greek cities in Sicily, Arab presence in Spain, Turkish Islam in Yugoslavia … It means meeting ancient realities, still alive, alongside the ultramodern…”.
