It was the Phoenicians, around the 9th-8th centuries B.C.E., who originated the port of Cagliari, the first nucleus of which was probably located on the eastern side of the S. Gilla pond. In Roman times the importance of the port, a sorting center for island goods and those from other countries, grew and the city, in addition to the lagoon port, was able to have a second port on the sea. Even in the darkest centuries of the Middle Ages, during which the capital was moved to St. Igia to escape Saracen raids, the port continued to play an essential function in supplying the island. The Pisans reintegrated the Cagliari port back into the European trade circuit. The importance of the Sardinian port of call is evidenced by the existence of a port statute, the Breve Kallaretani, dated February 1318, which regulated not only the operation and administration of the port but also commercial activities. The Aragonese, having driven out the Pisans in 1326, took care to fortify access to the port of call by means of walls in which two gates, the pier gate and the Mollet gate, opened; later the bastion of Sant’Agostino, the bastion of Sant’Elmo and the bastion of the Darsena or bastion of Castel Rodrigo were built. Intense port activity gave impetus to the development of the area of Bagnarla or La pola (from the 16th century Marina), full of warehouses, depots and dwellings for port workers to which merchants’ stores were added. From the early 16th century, the loading and unloading of goods was handled exclusively by the Gremio dei Santelmari, a corporation of sailors and boatmen modeled on the scale of similar institutions in force in Barcelona. Together with the other Gremi, it was dissolved in 1864. In the late 1800s, the harbor, consisting of the dock wharves and the sanitary wharf, was expanded with the east wharf, the west wharf, and the Sant’Agostino wharf. In the 1900s, with the reclamation of Su Siccu, where a small pier was built, and with the construction of the maritime station, the port took on, substantially, its present appearance. From the 1970s, the construction of the canal port began in order to include the port of call in the international traffic of large merchant ships.
