Alghero 367
In the sixteenth century, Alghero played a strategic role in Madrid’s con-
trol of Sardinia, serving as a shield against the ever-growing Turkish threat in
the Mediterranean, particularly after the Turks’ alliance with nearby France.
Consequently, the investments allotted by Spain for modifying Alghero’s forti-
fications were huge; the ramparts and the towers of the city were the architec-
tural results of the Spanish Crown, and particularly Charles V’s apprehensive
concern for guaranteeing the defense of the stronghold, and through it, the
security of a substantial portion of northern Sardinia.
Work proceeded slowly in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, due
to the complex funding of the project. Nonetheless, the Islamic conquest of
Tunis in 1574 contributed to the increasing awareness of the dangers faced by
Sardinia, and thus likewise Spain, and put pressure on the building yards work-
ing on Alghero’s ramparts.20 Alghero was consequently viewed from distant
Madrid as more of a fortress than a city, and it was thus that map-makers rep-
resented it for a long time: an empty city inside a shell represented by walls
(Fig. 14.3). What was of interest was not the urban form, axial thoroughfares,
or town center, but the efficacy of the defensive apparatus, constituted by the
ramparts and walls.
Recent excavations have restored substantial stretches of what could plau-
sibly be considered the “Genoese” wall circuit inspected by the Catalan notary
Pere Fuya on 19 February 1364,21 which was augmented by a sizable mass of
ramparted sixteenth-century fortifications, transforming an important forti-
fied medieval town center (capable of impressing the Catalan King Peter III
by the efficacy of its defensive works during the siege of 1354)22 into a large
fortress, the urban aspect of which was sacrificed to create the strategic strong-
hold desired by the Spanish Crown. The aforementioned excavations revealed
these monuments or their remains, which were buried by demolition in the late
nineteenth century. All of the interventions occasioned by public works proj-
ects in the area of the ramparts and the city walls, have mainly concentrated
Nudi, “Il progetto di Bernardo Buontalenti per la città nuova,” in Livorno: progetto e storia
di una città tra il 1500 e il 1600 (Pisa, 1980), pp. 15–23; Oliva and Paba, “La struttura urbana
di Alghero,” emphasizes an “urban image [...] of a city that was already considerably lively
and articulated.”
20 Giuseppe Mele, “La difesa dal Turco nel Mediterraneo occidentale dopo la caduta di La
Goletta (1574),” in Sardegna, Spagna e Mediterraneo: dai re cattolici al secolo d’oro, eds
Bruno Anatra and Giovanni Murgia (Rome, 2004), p. 151.
21 Mario Salvietti, Alghero. Le fortificazioni medievali nella pergamena di Pere Fuyà e dopo
recenti ritrovamenti (Alghero, 1990), p. 34.
22 On the siege of Alghero, see Giuseppe Meloni, Genova e Aragona all’epoca di Pietro il
Cerimonioso, I (1336–1354) (Padua, 1971), p. 213.