Ichnussa

In 1800 BC the island saw the rise of the Nuraghic civilisation. The people lived in stone towers called nuraghi. These were built with overlapped rocks and in certain places inserted into a system of buildings making boundaries, bastions, courtyards and low towers. Today there are around 11,000 nuraghi on the island. The civilisation of the Nuraghi has left its most imposing traces in the castle of Su Nuraxi next to Barumini, in the province of Cagliari, and to the north in the so-called one "palace" of Torralba at Sant'Antine. The decline of the Nuraghic civilisation was marked by the arrival of the Phoenician in the island who installed themselves in abundance along the coasts. Following the Phoenicians the Carthaginians landed on the island: they founded the cities of Cagliari, Tharros, Nora, Sulci on pre-existing nuraghi settlements.
Following the Punic Wars the Romans arrived in 238 BC; they founded military garrisons, built roads, expanded the cities and exploited the level areas to grow wheat for Rome. The island was part of the Roman province of Africa and was passed to the Eastern Roman Empire after 476 AD. It was granted a certain amount of autonomy and split into four jurisdictions called Logudoro, Gallura, Arborea and Cagliari. Following the Roman period the island was fought over by the Vandals, Byzantines and Arabs.
After the year one thousand the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa directed their attention to-ward the island transferring families and enterprises and introducing their Romanesque architecture. The island was then conquered by the house of Aragon who introduced a Gothic style of building. The spirit of autonomy of some territories animated a strong anti-Aragonese resistance that extended up to the dawn of the XV century. The island then became a dominion of the Crown of Spain, constituted at the end of the XV century with the marriage between Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon.
After 400 years of Spanish rule control of the island passed to Austria who in turn ceded it to the house of Savoy in 1720. From 1743, Gian Lorenzo Bogino, a minister of Piedmont, affected measures of reform: he re-opened the universities of Cagliari and Sassari, founded once more on the model of the athenaeum in Turin. Gian Lorenzo Bogino developed the archipelago of the Maddalena, where a military fortress was built to protect the port. In the 1800s this developed into an important military base. During the years of the French Revolution a feudal anti Savoy movement was formed, led by Giovanni Maria An-gioy, but the island firmly remained checked by the Kingdom of Savoy, thanks also to the naval support furnished from England.
After the unification of Italy the island was to suffer a great economic crisis that produced ban-ditry and poverty. However new industries started at this time including mining. The Italian fascist state launched an imposing work of reclamation of the malarial swampland and exploitation of the mines, with the foundation of new cities (Arborea, Fertilia and Carbonia). In 1962 a program of economic regeneration was conceived and applied to the industrial areas of Sassari, Macomer, Porto Torres, Cagliari and Olbia. There were also new initiatives in wine and crop production. More recently Sardinia has seen a rise in tourism particularly in coastal areas.