Sardinia Sardinia Sardinia ( ; ; or ; ; ; ; ) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (after Sicily and before Cyprus). It is located west of the Italian Peninsula and to the immediate south of the French island of Corsica. Sardinia is politically a region of Italy, whose official name is "Regione Autonoma della Sardegna" / "Regione Autònoma de Sardigna" (Autonomous Region of Sardinia), and enjoys some degree of domestic autonomy granted by a specific Statute. It is divided into four provinces and a metropolitan city, with Cagliari being the region's capital and its largest city as
Sardinia Kingdom ended and Sardinia was returned to Roman rule. In 533, Sardinia returned to the rule of the Byzantine Empire when the Vandals were defeated by the armies of Justinian I under the General Belisarius in the Battle of Tricamarum, in their African kingdom; Belisarius sent his general Cyril to Sardinia to retake the island. Sardinia remained in Byzantine hands for the next 300 years aside from a short period in which it was invaded by the Ostrogoths in 551. Under Byzantine rule, the island was divided into districts called "mereíai" (μερείαι) in Byzantine Greek, which were governed by a