The Antico Archivio Regio is the oldest and most important body of records preserved by Archivio di Stato di Cagliari.
It is not the archive of a single institution, but brings together records produced by the successive administrations that governed Sardinia between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Its origins lie in the General Archive of the Regnum Sardiniae, established by Alfonso IV d’Aragona in 1332 in the Castello district of Cagliari. Over the centuries, as rule passed from the Crown of Aragon to the Spanish monarchy and then to the House of Savoy, the records produced by government offices were gradually collected, arranged and incorporated into the existing archival complex.
At the Origins of Sardinian Memory
Video storytelling dedicated to the “Antico Archivio Regio” fonds
The fonds preserves legislation, administrative measures, financial and judicial registers, dispatches, correspondence and other records connected with government, oversight and territorial administration. Its present structure also reflects the subject-based arrangement ordered by the Savoy monarchy in the eighteenth century and the subsequent organisation of the records brought together in the Regi Archivi.
The Antico Archivio Regio makes it possible to trace the development of the island’s institutional framework, relations between the centre and the periphery, and the administrative practices that shaped Sardinian history under Aragonese, Spanish and Savoy rule. It is therefore a primary source for research into the island’s institutional, administrative, legal and social history.