Sassari 339
the coast in the first century BC. The area corresponding to the present city of
Sassari did not differ significantly from the rest of the surrounding area, which
was characterized by sparse habitation of a rural type with farmsteads or vici.11
In the Roman era, the appeal of this region lay in its proximity to the island’s
main road, which extended from Carales to Turris, and the numerous springs,
from which an aqueduct (first century BC–first century AD) conveyed water to
Turris Libisonis.12
In the past, historians have placed the origins of medieval Thatari in the late
antique or proto-Byzantine era. This hypothesis was based on two nearly con-
temporaneous documents of dubious interpretation: the Chorografia of the
Anonimo Ravennate, which refers to a vicus Sacerci, and a letter by Gregory the
Great from 599, in which the no longer extant female convent of St. Boniface
is said to be close to a villa.13 The identification of this villa with Anonimo
Ravennate’s Sacerci is nonetheless based exclusively on the theory that the
monastery of St. Boniface was located “a las puertas de la ciudad de Sacer”, near
the delle Conce fountain, as proposed by F. Vico in the seventeenth century.14
Until now, there was an absence of archaeological evidence and significant
written sources predating the early twelfth century. Some structures and late
antique findings were uncovered during an emergency excavation on the pe-
riphery of Lu Regnu-S. Lorenzo in 2003.15 All the same, even if this site could
be identified as the settlement cited by the Anonimo Ravennate, its distance
from the historical center of Sassari is so great that it certainly cannot be as-
sociated with the original nucleus of the future urban settlement, but rather
with the nearby village of Quitarone. In reality, even in the late antique and
early medieval period, the Roman colony of Turris Libisonis, though decayed
and shrunken in size, remained the only important populated area in north-
west Sardinia, in addition to being an episcopal see, so much so that the large
Pisan Romanesque cathedral of San Gavino was constructed there around the
middle of the eleventh century.
The earliest surviving settlement in the area of Sassari was a rural village
built around the tenth–eleventh century. Among the earliest medieval written
sources in Sardinia, the twelfth-century condaghe (register) of the monastery
11 Maria Chiara Satta Ginesu, “L’età romana,” in Sassari le origini.
12 Maria Chiara Satta Ginesu, L’acquedotto romano di Turris Libisonis (Piedemonte Matese,
2001).
13 Enrico Costa, Sassari (Sassari, 1909), pp. 1201–1202; Castellacio, Sassari medioevale.
14 Francesco Vico, Historia general de la Isla y Reyno de Sardenya (Barcelona, 1634), part VI,
chap. 18, 66.
15 The unpublished reports of the excavation were kindly shown to me by my colleague,
Nadia Canu, whom I thank.