The Asylum Steria is a structure from the second half of the 19th century, owned by the wealthy Steria family: it included a large estate, in addition to the manor house, a large vegetable garden and a garden, full of fruit trees; rooms (in the rustic area) where the families of the farmers who tended the vineyard and carried out other agricultural activities stayed. The house and vineyard were accessed from vico XX Settembre “vico Secci in 1873,” and the property extended as far as today’s via Verga, which, in the early 1900s, was open country.
Anacleto Steria and his wife, residents of Cagliari, often found the village of Quartu to spend long vacation periods there. Steria, around the 1920s, having become a widower and childless, wanted to donate the property to the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent (1928) to build a kindergarten that today bears his name. Over the years, several renovations and additions to the new house were, of course, carried out. In 1932 a graduate nun and a nurse arrived so that they could begin teaching in the future Steria Kindergarten and assisting the needy. The asylum’s first guest was an illegitimate child, abandoned by her mother, who was followed by fifteen other orphans, transferred from Cagliari. In 1936 five more sisters arrived, including Sister Maria Aresu, who devoted themselves to caring for the trachomatous children attending the kindergarten.
From 1940 to 1945 the house was requisitioned entirely as a military hospital with 300 beds for sick people cared for by six Daughters of Charity who carried out their mission in the infirmary, laundry and kitchen. A remarkable charitable work that continued during and after the war and still continues today, always deserving to be remembered.
The home currently houses 135 children from the Kindergarten, 20 from the Spring section and, in keeping with the aims of the Vincentian charism, has a family home for minors where 145 needy families from different areas, including foreigners, are cared for.
