Palazzo Segni was built by Giuseppino Carta (father of Donna Laura Carta Caprino, wife of Antonio Segni) in the late 1920s and early 1930s and later divided into four very similar apartments for his own children. The second floor until 1943 was lived in by Donna Laura’s parents and later inhabited by Antonio Segni and his family; around the 1950s/60s it was expanded with two symmetrical arms on either side.
Today one part of the building is for private use, while another part houses the Department of History, Humanities and Education of the University of Sassari, which preserves the archives owned by the Antonio Segni Foundation, a collection of documents relating to the president’s own political activities in government, as well as memoirs, reports and political acts, personal family papers and manuscripts of published books and articles.
The building has a C-shaped floor plan, the main façade of which extends along Umberto Avenue, the sides of which are surrounded by greenery, while a square courtyard opens in the back. On the facade the carved wooden doorway is surrounded by a decorative round arch resting directly on the piers; on either side of the doorway the palace develops symmetrically: we find on the ground floor six architraved windows, three on each side; on the upper floor we notice the great balance given by the combination of windows. The main doorway leads to a large hallway preceded by a small flight of steps made of light marble and flanked by two steps. The high ceilings feature ribbed vaults and are decorated with half-capitals and cornices in Ionic style. The entire hallway is lit by a large ornamental stained glass window that highlights the flooring made of large slabs of the same marble used for the entrance steps. A marble well staircase leads to the upper level, whose iron and wooden railing opens with a lamppost as the staircase head.
