Former Town Hall

The Antico Palazzo di Città has been Cagliari Town Hall since the Middle Ages until the beginning of the XX century. It is located at Piazza Palazzo, in Castello district.

The Former Town Hall is a historic building of Cagliari, the town hall from the Middle Ages to the early years of the twentieth century, when, during a City Council meeting chaired by Mayor Ottone Bacaredda, on December 14, 1896, the transfer of the Town Hall to the new site, yet to be built on the via Roma, in front of the port, was decreed.

The building dates back to the XIV century and it was restored in the eighteenth century, according to the precepts of the Piedmontese Baroque style.

The building is on two levels, plus a lower ground floor.

On the main façade opens an elegant arched portal with the City's coat of arms above and a plaque commemorating the stay, in 1535, of Emperor Charles V.

The façade in via Canelles, which overlooks the piazza Carlo Alberto, is elegantly elaborate. An epigraph remembers the year when the building was renovated (1787) and the names of the five council members who, along with fifty jurors and a vicar, were responsible for the Castle's administration.

The inner rooms housed many works, among which some paintings by Marghinotti and the precious “Councillors' Altarpiece” by Pietro Cavaro, that were transferred to the new Town Hall in via Roma.

On the upper floor some classrooms for primary schools' pupils were arranged. The first floor housed the Conservatory of Music “Pier Luigi da Palestrina”, created by the lawyer Gavino Dessì Deliperi, until 1970, when it was moved to its new and current headquarters of Via Bacaredda.

After years of neglect, following careful restoration works, the building was returned to citizenship.

The building hosts temporary exhibitions.