Urban Planning And New Towns In Medieval Sardinia 529
shatter the region’s previous territorial balance, in stark contrast to the giudi-
cato policy and against the wishes of the pope.62 Following traumatic military
action, the Pisans fortified a hill that was strategically located near Bagnaria,
one of the port villages in Santa Igia, the capital city and seat of the giudicato
of Cagliari. The new town was located almost adjacent to the old one, remov-
ing large areas from the giudicato’s jurisdiction and fundamentally changing
the structure of the port city of Santa Igia, which faced the nearby lagoon and
the sea. The subsequent crisis of the giudicato of Cagliari seemed unstoppable.
Pisan urban success triggered a process that would last almost 200 years, lead-
ing to the end of the era of the giudicati.
Before examining the criteria adopted for the design of the new city of
Cagliari in detail, it might be useful to mention the broader implications of its
foundation. In the decades following the founding of Castro Novo, but before
the physical destruction of Santa Igia in 1258, Sardinian authorities had un-
dertaken many urban initiatives. These transformations in Sassari, Oristano,
and Iglesias, from the second half of the thirteenth century on, were mainly
military, regulatory, and monumental, imitating the model of the Italian co-
mune. Construction projects typically included a municipal or giudicato build-
ing, loggias for commercial and notary transactions, and at least one public
square. Like in the communes, the giudicato’s statutes (or Brevi or Convenzioni)
regulated residential building, transactions, as well as several other aspects of
citizens’ lives.63
62 Evandro Putzulu, “Il problema delle origini del Castellum Castri de Kallari,” Archivio
Storico Sardo 30 (1976), pp. 91–146. Marco Cadinu, 2015. “Il territorio di Santa Igia e il pro-
getto di fondazione del Castello di Cagliari, città nuova pisana del 1215,” 1215–2015. Ottocento
anni dalla fondazione del Castello di Castro di Cagliari, ed. Corrado Zedda, Consiglio
Nazionale delle Ricerche, RiMe Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea,
n. 15/2 (Dicembre 2015), pp. 95–147.
63 Abundant information about these cities, designed according to twelfth- and thirteenth-
century standards, still exists. The Ruga Mercatorum (via dei Mercanti) is documented
in Iglesias, Cagliari (1217), and Oristano (1230), and is a sign of an “international” activity.
This road name is frequent in merchant cities of the time, such as Coimbra and Amalfi.
The most important statutes in the island are those of Sassari (1294–1316) and Iglesias
(1302–1327), which survive in full and record the civic conditions of Sardinian towns be-
tween the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Bosa (first half of the fourteenth century),
Cagliari (1318), and Castel Genovese (1336) also had statutes, but only fragments survive;
similar instruments governed Bonifacio (1388) in Corsica, the result of a similar cultural
climate to Sardinian cities under the sway of Pisan and Genoese policy. On statutes tied
to the construction of these cities and town planning see Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale,
pp. 171–178. On the original editions of the documents see Francesco Artizzu, Gli ordina-
menti pisani per il porto di Cagliari (Rome, 1979); Raffaele Di Tucci, Il libro verde della città