The “Rafael Sari” Municipal Library in Alghero is a modern public reading library that originated in 1840, when a group of local middle-class people decided to create a Reading Cabinet. Accessible from Molo Square, it is housed in a part of the St. Clare complex in the heart of the city’s Old Town. The building was built in 1641 as a cloistered monastery of the Isabelline Sisters and was then used from 1870 until 1970 as a Civil Hospital, with St. Clare’s Church attached. After about forty years of neglect and decay, the complex has been undergoing a major renovation since 2004. In 2014, when the work was completed, the new headquarters of the Municipal Library was inaugurated, which also houses the Historical Archives of the City of Alghero and the Library of the Department of Architecture, Design and Urban Planning of the University of Sassari.
