Alghero 365
caused the city to rise by several meters. Such conditions have been discovered
through excavations that succeeded in reaching the bedrock. The contexts
identified through archaeological stratification up to that point could in no
way be dated before the second half of the thirteenth century, but confirm the
date of the oldest known document in which Alghero is mentioned (1281).14
More generally, a joint reading of the written sources and the “urban” plans
of the seigniorial centers of the Doria (particularly Alghero, Castelgenovese,
Casteldoria, Monteleone) and the Malaspina (Bosa and Osilo) reveal the no-
table scale of the surfaces enclosed—certainly in successive stages—between
the city walls (as was also the case with the Genoese colony of Bonifacio in
Corsica), where the burgenses enjoyed benefits and privileges, and a group of
fideles secured close ties with the lord. The hierarchical relationship between
the bridgehouse and the village is crystal clear in many strongholds (with the
exception of Alghero, where the seigniorial part of the castrum Allogerii was
eliminated by the site’s transformation), where the burgus extended its tangle
of settlement onto the hillsides, with internal axial roads for crossing the steep-
est slopes and houses with double entrances, which were remade on the model
of a “slope” house.
Until the Catalan conquest of 1354, the scene in Alghero seems to have been
totally dominated by the Doria, whose rule developed the clear features of a
“strong” seignior, Brancaleone I Doria, from the 1260s. Brancaleone was a char-
ismatic figure at the acme of the vast Doria dominion for over half a century
and a protagonist in lively international political activity, who was capable of
debating with the pope, the king of Aragon, and the principal political figure-
heads of his time, impelled by his ambition to obtain recognition of his royal
rank in Sardinia. It was certainly no accident that during the deliberations held
by the commune of Pisa regarding peace with Genoa in 1288, Brancaleone
Doria emerged as the actual arbitrator with regard to reparations for the dam-
ages caused by the war provoked by Pisa in 1283 through its sack of Alghero,
which still consisted of a consistently Genoese population, composed of mem-
bers of urban aristocratic families and other Genoese.15 By this point, Genoa
14 In an act drafted in Genoa on 26 February 1281 by the notary Leonardo Negrino; see
Laura Balletto, “Genova e la Sardegna nel secolo XIII,” Saggi e documenti (Genoa) 1 (1978),
doc. 37, p. 256.
15 This episode is cited in Giovanni Villani’s Cronaca, VII, 89. See also, Castellaccio, “Mura e
torri difensive,” p. 388.