Urban Planning And New Towns In Medieval Sardinia 521
ceramic basins of Islamic origins for the composition of church facades.47 A
case in point is the late twelfth-century facade of San Pietro di Sorres, located
in Borutta, which is fully carved with geometric stone inlays and neoclassical
motifs that are complemented by a mullioned window with horseshoe arches.
This was certainly among the most costly facades built during the Sardinian
Romanesque era. It can be interpreted as the giudice’s desire to marry interna-
tional taste with current Islamic culture, rather than as the outcome of Islamic
craftsmanship.48
This fertile historic and cultural moment encouraged commercial exchange
and further contact between Sardinia and other Mediterranean cities. Merchants
alighted upon Sardinia in search of hospitality and physically stable areas in the
cities and ports, from which to open trade routes to North Africa and other areas
of the Mediterranean. The presence of their official mercantile representatives
was documented with greater frequency starting in the mid-twelfth century.49
47 This phenomenon is widespread in most Italian regions, such as Lazio and Tuscany, but
also in Corsica. On this question, see Hobart, “Merchants, Monks,” p. 106; the author pres-
ents the hypothesis of significant cultural exchange, seen in more than 60 churches origi-
nally decorated this way on the island. For a more dated, but also useful, overview on this
topic, see Graziella Berti, “Ceramiche islamiche del Mediterraneo occidentale usate come
Bacini in Toscana, in Sardegna e in Corsica, secoli 11.–13” (Agrigento, 1990).
48 This consideration might nuance the evaluation of further monuments affected by inter-
ventions of Islamic taste, like the church of Santa Maria di Tergu, near Sassari. The impact
of Lucca and Pisa, often evoked in comparison, are not dissimilar styles. In my opinion,
historians should interpret them as decided stylistic choices that were clearly distant
from other northern Romanesque models. See also Carlo Tosco, L’architettura medievale
in Italia, 600–1200 (Bologna, 2016), pp. 228–236.
49 The “Tyrrhenian corridor,” the maritime route between Pisa and Tunis, was what led to
the foundation of the city of Cagliari by the Pisans in the 1200s, aimed at the Tunisian
markets. Corrado Zedda, “I rapporti commerciali tra la Sardegna e il Mediterraneo dal
XIII al XV Secolo. Continuità e mutamenti,” Archivio storico e giuridico sardo di Sassari
n.s. 12 (2007), p. 138. The Pisan Maior Portus was founded in 1147 and in 1182 in Oristano,
in Santa Igia at the beginning of the twelfth century, and in Orosei in 1173. Consuls were
present in Cagliari, Oristano, Portotorres, Civita di Gallura, Bosa, and Orosei in 1227, in
Bosove (near Sassari) in 1230, and in Ampurias in 1233; see Arrigo Solmi, Studi storici sulle
istituzioni della Sardegna nel medio evo (Cagliari, 1917), p. 237; Raffaele Di Tucci, “I con-
soli in Sardegna (secc. XII–XVII). Documenti,” Archivio Storico Sardo 7: 30–32 (1911), pp.
49–100; Francesco Artizzu, La Sardegna pisana e genovese (Sassari, 1985), p. 153. For com-
merce in Sardinian ports from the twelfth century on, see Alessandro Soddu, “ ‘Homines
de Bonifacio non possunt vivere non euntes ad partes Sardinie’: Commerce between Corsica
and Sardinia in the 13th Century,” Quaderni Bolotanesi 34 (2008), pp. 67–88; Zedda, “I rap-
porti commerciali”; Alessandra Argiolas and Antonello Mattone, “Ordinamenti portuali e
territorio costiero di una comunità della Sardegna moderna: Terranova (Olbia) in Gallura