After the decommissioning of the military stronghold (1866), the eastern slope of the Castello fortress was affected on several occasions by interventions that changed its face and function: first a garden and municipal nursery, then a sports field, until it was occupied as a construction site for the consolidation works on the walls and rocky ridges of Castello in the 1980s, when a major portion of the 18th-century counter-fortifications was demolished to allow trucks to drive up. In 2011, the Cagliari Municipality began the redevelopment work, after a delay of more than eight years caused by technical and bureaucratic problems. The project, linked to the formal language that characterizes the axis of Viale Regina Elena up to the Giardini Pubblici, arranged by Ubaldo Badas in the 1930s, envisions an open-air continuation of the Covered Promenade of the Bastion of St. Remy. A long avenue in white marble tozzetti and black recursions divides the Garden under the walls longitudinally, outlining vast flower beds with local flower essences and centuries-old trees, such as the monumental carob tree placed at the entrance. The counter fortification, which inside contains a vaulted staircase made by the Savoyard militia, has been fully recovered. A new building body for a food court, made of limestone and glass, ideally continues the original alignment of the demolished portion. Three sculptures by Sardinian artist Pinuccio Sciola, arranged in as many white stone basins, represent three “faces” that the city of Cagliari has taken on in its millennia-long history: Santa Igia, the submerged medieval city; the perched city of Castello; and the “city of salt” with its typical white pyramidal mounds.
