The National Archaeological Museum in Castello holds the finest collection of Sardinian prehistoric and protohistoric material in the world. The centrepiece is the collection of Nuragic bronzes — small cast figures that represent the most sophisticated bronze-working tradition in the western Mediterranean outside Greece. Hundreds of figurines, weapons, and ritual objects excavated from nuraghi and sacred well-temples across Sardinia fill a large gallery, and the cumulative effect is striking: these are not primitive objects, but refined works of art from a culture that has left almost no written record.
Beyond the Nuragic material, the museum covers Phoenician, Carthaginian, and Roman Sardinia with equal depth. The Roman mosaics, the Phoenician jewellery, and the Carthaginian objects imported from across the Mediterranean all fill galleries in the Cittadella dei Musei complex, which also includes a small natural history museum and an art gallery. Allow half a day for the full complex; if you're short of time, the Nuragic galleries alone are worth an hour.