516 Cadinu
judicial urban center, possibly even during pre-giudicale period, around the
tenth or eleventh century.37 That said, recent urban archaeological investiga-
tions further help confirm the Mediterranean urban model. The material cul-
ture that has been analyzed confirms that the northern part of the island has
been in contact with wide-ranging exchanges, that go from Saxony to North
Africa.38
The small size of the city’s streets and alleys contrasts with its hallmark,
the wide street named Platha de Cotinas, which crosses it lengthwise with
many of its most important buildings (Fig. 19.7). The marketplace developed
in the street’s arcades, which are now completely integrated into the residen-
tial fabric of the city. It was over 350 m long (over 650 m in its late medieval
form), divided into several areas according to statutes in effect at the end of
the thirteenth century, when the Loggia and Town Hall were located there.
This exceptionally large street and market was unique in Sardinia and can-
not be dated with precision. However, it is clearly the result of a unified urban
37 Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale, pp. 74–79. Tab. 26–28, pp. 114–116. The city walls that sur-
vive, conceived in the thirteenth century, are part of the following communal phase of
the city. New monuments and monasteries, the enlargement of the market square, new
residential units of a much wider cadastral extension all become part of the new larger
fortification of the city, which substantially doubles. It’s significant to note that the en-
semble of the public communal building and the loggia are placed outside of the original
nucleus, to be at the center of the new expansion. It may be useful to abandon some tradi-
tional interpretations regarding non-documented Byzantine centers (Vico Mossa), to the
many and frankly not significant late antique vici (Ilario Principe), evaluations that lack
any historical reference to non-existent radial urban forms (Orlandi), or to the tradition
of the nineteenth-century erudites (Costa), and a more recent tradition that indicates
Tuscan or Ligurian models for the conception of the city.
38 Two hundred silver coins from the Lucca mint by Otto III of Saxony (983–1002), Kufic
coins from the nearby Porto Torres and from the cabotage port of Argentiera, dated to
the ninth century, the small amphorae from Muslim Palermo (tenth-eleventh century)
and residual and known Tunisian pottery (that ranges from the ninth to the thirteenth
century) found in the context of Sassari; to these must be added interesting wall traces
of a period when pisé constructions were prevalent. See Rovina and Fiori, Sassari (2013)
and in particular Daniela Rovina, pp. 25–30. On Sassari and in particular on the urban
development of the Pisan phase, see also Porcu Gaias, Sassari, pp. 11–58. Imported pottery
from Savona and Catalunya of the thirteenth century and from Pisa and Valencia of the
fourteenth century: Rovina and Fiori, Sassari (2013), in particular Mauro Fiori, pp. 66–72.
Another element that may lead to further ties with Mediterranean Islamic settlements
and culture is the identity of the magistrate of waters mentioned in Sassari statutes of
1294–1316 (so-called partidore de abba—he who dispenses water), see above, footnote 27.