Audioguide

Style : Neo-Gothic

Designers : Antonio Cerruti

The former Hotel Scala di Ferro stands on the area used in Roman times as a cemetery for sailors where, in the Middle Ages, the « Bastione di Nostra Signora del Monserrato » was built. In 1852 the are was bought by Antonio Cerruti who, in 1859, inaugurated the homonymous theatre (known as « Diurno ») and, a few, years later, a public bath with twenty marble tubs. Cerruti used the cellars as a warehouse for ice brought from Lapland in exchange for sea salt. The Cerruti Baths were the first unit of the Hotel Scala di Ferro, a building in Neo-Gothic style, with crenellated towers, an external ornament with alternating white and black stripes, an indoor garden, ogival windows and a fountain by the sculptor Giuseppe Sartorio. In 1898 engineer Dionigi Scano designed the entrance in Viale Regina Margherita. The hotel hosted, throughout its history, famous people such as English writer Davide Herbert Laurence (who in 1921 immortalized the hotel in his book Sea and Sardinia), Dutch archaelogist Theodor Mommsen, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Salvatore Quasimodo, Carlo Levi Sibilia Aleramo, Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali, Mario Del Monaco and Totò.

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