Route 3 · half a day, plus an extension
An amphitheatre cut into the rock, a botanical garden inside an archaeological site, and the largest Punic necropolis in the Mediterranean.
Karales was recognised as a Roman municipium around 38 BC, but the city had been there for centuries already: Phoenician, Punic, then Roman. From that time there remain the forum under piazza del Carmine, the baths of largo Carlo Felice, the aqueduct that entered the city at Stampace itself — and four places you can still walk through.
This route has one peculiarity: it begins two hundred metres from our table. The valley of Palabanda, with the amphitheatre, the Roman villa and the botanical garden, sits just above Via Mameli.
On foot · 5 minutes from Via Mameli
We start here because it is the closest and because it tells the story of the changeover: it was a limestone quarry in the late Punic and Roman periods before becoming a church in the 1200s. It is the one place in the city where you can put your hand on the reason Cagliari is full of caves: the stone it stands on is the same stone it is built with.
On foot · 7 minutes from the crypt
In via Carbonazzi, and it is the most important Roman residential complex of ancient Karales: three grand town houses and a bath building, occupied from the first century BC to the sixth and seventh AD. The Casa degli Stucchi was discovered in 1876, the Casa del Tablino dipinto excavated in 1963. The polychrome mosaics that decorated the houses are now in the Museo Archeologico; what is left here is stucco and painted plaster. The name comes from Tigellio, a poet and singer of the Augustan age who by tradition bought land near the amphitheatre to build a house on.
On foot · 5 minutes from the villa
Five minutes further up, and it is the stop that holds the whole route together. The University bought the land in 1858 and opened the garden in 1866 under the direction of Patrizio Gennari, to a design by Gaetano Cima: four and a half hectares in the valley of Palabanda, around two thousand species, six hundred trees, a palm grove of four thousand square metres and a thousand species of succulents. But the reason it is in this guide is another one: the garden is built inside an archaeological site, and among the plants are the Roman quarry, the cistern, the trefoil basin and the noria well. It is a living museum with the ancient city under its feet.
On foot · 8 minutes uphill from the garden
It is the most monumental public building of Roman Sardinia, made by cutting into the rock bank on the slopes of the Buoncammino hill: three tiers of seating for around ten thousand spectators, a south front that rose more than twenty metres and a drainage corridor ninety-five metres long that ends in an underground cistern. Marble slabs have come to light in the excavations: the seating was faced. The restoration under way, funded with a little over four million euros of European money, is meant to link it directly to the Orto Botanico and make the two into a single archaeological and botanical park.
On foot · 20 minutes downhill, past the Grotta della Vipera
This is the extension, to the west, and on its own it is worth half a day. It is the Phoenician-Punic necropolis on the hill of the same name: about a thousand tombs between the sixth and the third century BC, vertical shafts cut into the limestone from three to eleven metres deep, with the burial chamber at the bottom and, in some, wall paintings of the fourth and third centuries. The historic monumental area covers eighteen hectares, the laid-out park three and a half. The name comes from the Sardinian tuvu, “small hole”. The hill was a cement quarry until the 1980s and an air-raid shelter during the war. Entry is free.
On foot · 20 minutes from Via Mameli, across the Marina
On the other side of the centre, on the line of via Dante. It is the oldest Early Christian monument in Sardinia: first built between the fourth and fifth centuries, rebuilt by the Byzantines in the sixth, then in 1089 the ruins were given to the Victorines of Marseille, who worked on it in the Provençal Romanesque manner, and the church was reconsecrated in 1119. Greek-cross plan with four equal arms and a central dome. Saturninus was beheaded in 304 for refusing to renounce his faith: he is the patron saint of the city.
Two stops have problems: the Villa di Tigellio is closed and the amphitheatre is only partly open. The route holds up all the same — the crypt, the Orto Botanico, Tuvixeddu and San Saturnino are open and between them cover the whole span from the Phoenicians to the Byzantines. San Saturnino has limited days and hours: check the Ministry’s page.
The short loop — crypt, villa, garden, amphitheatre — takes two and a half hours and never goes more than a kilometre from Via Mameli. Tuvixeddu and San Saturnino are two half days of their own.
We don’t write the opening times and tickets ourselves: every stop links to the site of whoever keeps it open. They change, and theirs is the right source.
Halfway round
140 Grammi is at Via Mameli 91, in Stampace, below Castello: this walk starts here and comes back here. If you want the table ready, book. On Wednesdays the Carbonara is half price.
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