The Archaeological Museum is one of the exhibition venues of the National Museums of Cagliari, an Institute of the Ministry of Culture with special autonomy.

It is located in the ancient district of Castello, inside the Citadel of Museums built between 1956 and 1979 with the recovery of the royal Arsenal and the medieval walls designed by the architects Libero Cecchini and Piero Gazzola.

It is the most important archaeological museum in Sardinia with over 4000 objects that tell a story spanning almost 7000 years, from Prehistory to the Early Middle Ages, from Neolithic mother goddesses to Nuragic bronzes, from Phoenician and Punic jewelry to Roman statuary, reaching the cult objects of the Byzantine era.

The birth of the Cagliari archaeological museum dates back to 1800, when Viceroy Carlo Felice, accepting the proposal of Cavalier Baylle, set up in a room of the Viceregal palace the Cabinet of Archaeology and Natural History, as a wunderkammer, a room of wonders where unique, precious, and particular objects were displayed together.

In 1904, in the space previously occupied by the Royal Mint in Piazza Indipendenza, the Royal Archaeological Museum was built according to the design of Dionigi Scano. It was then transferred in 1993 to the complex of the Citadel of Museums.

The museum's collections are housed on four floors corresponding to different exhibition themes.

The ground floor offers a chronological-educational path that traces the history of human presence in Sardinia from the ancient Neolithic to the Middle Ages. The exhibited materials come from both the first private collections that formed the original nucleus of the museum's heritage and from the various archaeological excavations that have affected and still affect the territory.

The first and second floors follow a topographical arrangement. Some of the most important archaeological sites in Sardinia are represented: Cagliari and its neighboring centers, Monte Sirai, Sant'Antioco, Bithia, Nora, as well as the main Nuragic centers.