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Cagliari is called Casteddu (literally, the castle) in the Sardinian language. It has about 165,000 inhabitants, or about 300,000 including the suburbs (metropolitan area) (Elmas, Pirri, Quartucciu, Quartu Sant'Elena).
In ancient times, it was a substantial Phoenician trading town (under the name of Karalis). It passed with the rest of the island to Rome in 238 BC. Subsequently ruled in turn by the Vandals, Byzantine Empire, Genoa, Pisa, Aragon (during the Catalan domination the city was named Càller), Spain and briefly Austria, it came under the Duchy of Piedmont in 1720. From the 1870s the city experienced a century of rapid growth.