348 Rovina
From an urban point of view, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the
transformation of the rural village did not take place through the gradual ex-
pansion of the inhabited area around the circular nucleus, but on the basis of
an entirely new design and plan. The houses on Largo Monache Cappuccine
and Piazza Duomo, as well as those on Largo Seminario, were both probably
marginal with respect to the original settlement, and they are not inserted into
the subsequent orthogonal plan of the late medieval city. On the contrary, the
buildings at the first and second sites were already at least partly abandoned
and destroyed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries respectively, that is, at
the peak moment of urban growth. It is likely that these acts of destruction
were linked to the new demand for a more “important” architecture, with
urban features, a drastic urban reorganization based on orthogonal axes, and
the transfer or intensification of the urban hub towards the principal thor-
oughfare that cut the city longitudinally from north to south. Significantly, the
sole element representing the effective continuity between the villa and the
city is the church of San Nicola, to which a bell tower was added in the thir-
teenth century (Fig. 13.7).
After Mariano II’s death, the crisis of the giudicato accelerated. Strong sepa-
ratist impulses in the new city, as well as impatience with the power of the giu
dicati, were violently manifested in 1235 with the murder of the young giudice
Barisone III, who was succeeded by Adelasia, wed to Ubaldo Visconti, giudice
of Gallura, and after his death, to Enzo of Swabia, son of the Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa. Upon Adelasia’s death in 1256, the giudicato of Torres came to a de
facto end, though its formal secession occurred only in 1272 with the death of
Enzio of Swabia. That very same year, in circumstances that remain unclear,
Sassari was caught up in the middle of the escalating conflict between Genoa
and Pisa, which sent its own podestà.
The city in the first half of the century was probably the first commune
on the island; from this moment onwards it became a “pationato” commune,31
that is, one subject to a dominant power—first to Pisa, then, after 1294, to Genoa.
The latter exercised political control over city life through its appointment of
rivolte di Pisa,” in Medioevo. Età moderna. Saggi in onore del prof. Alberto Boscolo (Cagliari,
1972), pp. 49–83.
31 The term pationato derives from the Latin “pactio-pactionis,” and means “agreement”:
in the case of a municipality, this term indicates that an institution in the city was
not entirely free, but conditioned by an agreement with another city, in this case, Pisa
or Genova. S. Igia, the capital of the giudicato of Cagliari, was for a very brief period a
“pationato” commune of Genoa. Another communal experience under Pisa was that of
Villa di Chiesa, today Iglesias, which also had little political and administrative autonomy.