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Viewing CEgliari from the sea at the start of his Sardinian sojourn in 1921, D.H. Lawrence compared it to Jerusalem: "eŠ strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like Italy". Today, still crowned by an old centre squeezed within a protective ring of Pisan fortifications,
CEGLIARI
is less frenetic than any town of equivalent size on the mainland, with a population of nearly a quarter of a million spread around its modern outskirts in mushrooming apartment blocks. Its setting is enhanced by the calm lagoons (
stagni
) behind the city and along the airport road, the habitat for cranes, cormorants and flamingos. In the centre, the evening promenades along Via Manno are the smartest you'll see in Sardinia, dropping down to the noisier Piazza Yenne and Largo Carlo Felice, around which most of the shops, restaurants, banks and hotels are located. At the bottom of the town, the arcades of Via Roma shelter shops and bars, in between which African and Asian traders jostle for pavement space.
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