Monuments

Sardinia has an extraordinary concentration of archaeological monuments and historic-artistic, distributed throughout the territory, in the context of both rural and citizens. The type varies according to historical periods. Age pre-nuragic are reported cases only as the great temple-altar of Monte d'Accoddi; circle tombs and burial caves called "domus de Janas" (literally, fairy houses, folk tradition), megalithic monuments like the dolmens and menhirs, testifying prehistoric cultural forms common to Europe.

The entrance of Sardinia age nuragica marks the emergence of new building types, such as Protonuraghe, and especially the symbolic monument: the Nuraghe, sometimes surrounded the village. Nuraghi addition to temples, shrines and tombs as funerary structures of giants.
Frequenting the coast of Sardinia by Phoenicians, Punic colonization and then determine the emergence of urban centers and thus new types monumental as the Tophet (cemeteries for burial of children).

The Roman conquest in Sardinia also introduces new types of buildings, which represent the typical expression of the power of Rome, whose culture could be legitimately called globalizing 'Ante litteram'. The main centers of the island Romanization, especially the great coastal cities of Cagliari, Nora, Sant'Antioco, Tharros and Porto Torres, include baths, aqueducts, bridges, theaters and amphitheaters.

The crisis and the Christianization of the empire lay in Sardinia the introduction of new types of architecture: the first Christian churches, Byzantine churches in cruciform shape dome. From the historic fabric of Byzantine culture is passed, exceeded the threshold of one thousand, the new Judicial structures of Sardinia, with the magnificent flowering of Romanesque churches.
These will replace or accompany the centuries, the Gothic-Italian, Catalan-Gothic, Mannerist, Baroque and late Baroque, Neoclassical, to the architecture of the postwar period.
In parallel we are witnessing the construction of castles, houses and palaces of the aristocracy secular and ecclesiastical.

Also in the field of civil architecture include military facilities such as the coastal towers, designed to defend the island from the barbarian invasions.
The ages between the unification of Italy and the reconstruction after the Second World War is characterized more and more pronounced from being brought to the island's architecture international trends, with results ranging from historic buildings in the early twentieth century to the rational scheme Fascist achievements of some of the most important contemporary architects.