Via Milano, the street that runs through the Bonaria district, was once called by the people of Cagliari the “Via del Mare,” the name of the ancient pass that, across the Montixeddu and Bonaria hills, descended to the port. Since the early twentieth century, the street was shaped around the idea of an architecture made up of small villas, each with its own garden. In 1926, the Società Anonima Bonaria, with Roman capital, initiated an ambitious project that aimed to transform the stony hill into a residential area. From 1926 to 1938, the Cagliari bourgeoisie bought land on the hill and entrusted the design of the very first villas to architects and engineers (including Talamanca, Narici and Corazza, all from Rome, but also Valente and Jannarino, who designed their own houses at numbers 37 and 97), who “paged” their architecture with heterogeneous styles. Interesting examples of deco, neo-medieval, eclectic and rationalist architecture arose. Soon, bourgeois cottages were joined by buildings designed to house office workers, laborers, and railroad workers. These were working-class houses but of excellent workmanship, perfectly integrated into the new small artery where different social classes coexisted in balance. These new houses were also conceived following the idea of the “garden city” typical of the street, made up of buildings surrounded by large green spaces where tall plants, creepers, jacarandas, and blooms of all kinds were mixed. After World War II, the search for new spaces rekindled interest in the street, and in this period Ubaldo Badas, an architect without academic qualifications but with great talent, began to work in the “Via del Mare,” who left his mark on at least two villas (at No. 7 and No. 42) and influenced subsequent works, which had to measure themselves with his style attentive to the lesson of great Italian and international architecture.
