Archaeological evidence of prehistoric human settlement on Sardinia island is present in the form of the nuraghe which dot the land. The recorded history of Sardinia begins with its contacts with the various people who sought to dominate western Mediterranean trade in Classical Antiquity: the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Romans. Initially under the political and economic alliance with the Phoenician cities, it was colonised and then conquered by Rome during the First Punic War (238 BC) but strong Punic cultural influences remained until the 1st century AD.

In the Early Middle Ages, through barbarian movements and the waning of Roman (by this time Byzantine) authority, the island fell out of the sphere of influence of any higher government. Saracen raids provided an impetus for the creation of independent^{[citation needed]}, quasi-royal giudicati in the 8th through 10th centuries. Falling under papal influence, Sardinia becomes the focus of the rivalry of Genoa and Pisa and finally of the local population and the Crown of Aragon, which subsumed the island as the Kingdom of Sardinia in (1324), which was to last until 1720 when it was acquired by the House of Savoy, which later, in 1861, became the Kingdom of Italy and finally the Republic of Italy.

Sardinia ( /sɑrˈdɪniə/, Italian: Sardegna [sarˈdeɲɲa], Sardinian: Sardigna [sarˈdinja]) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (after Sicily and before Cyprus). It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are (clockwise from north) the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.

The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[], romanised as sardus (feminine sarda); that the name had a religious connotation is suggested from its use also as the adjective for the ancient Sardinian mythological hero-god Sardus Pater "Sardinian Father" (misunderstood by many modern Sardinians/Italians as being "Father Sardus"), as well as being the stem of the adjective "sardonic". Sardinia was called Ichnusa (the Latinised form of the Greek Hyknousa), Sandalion, Sardinia and Sardo by the ancient Greeks and the Romans.

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 23,821 km². It is situated between 38° 51' and 41° 15' latitude north and 8° 8' and 9° 50' east longitude. To the west of Sardinia is the Sea of Sardinia, a unit of the Mediterranean Sea; to Sardinia's east is the Tyrrhenian Sea, which is also an element of the Mediterranean Sea.