Urban Planning And New Towns In Medieval Sardinia 531
which became the city’s exclusive residential area starting in the early decades
of the thirteenth century.67
In Sassari, an important expansion seems to have occurred in the north part
of the city, where the more archaic forms thinned out and the urban fabric was
much less dense, with larger building lots. The via Turritana was built along a
straight axis connecting the church of San Nicola and the eastern side of the
wall, leaving a large ecclesiastical area to the south; it became the archbish-
opric in 1441.68 Beginning in 1236, the municipality of Sassari promoted the
67 Francesco Artizzu, Documenti inediti relativi ai rapporti economici tra la Sardegna e Pisa
nel Medioevo, 2 vols (Padua, 1961–1962), docs 10, 14, 1244; Pisan style: “[...] unum pecium
terre cum domo super se et omni sua pertinentia et umbraco positum in Arborea in villa de
Arestano in Ruga Mercatorum [...] via publica [...] (one above it and placed in Arborea in
the villa of Arestano in the public Road of the Merchants).”
68 Graziella Lintas, La bolla della traslazione. Eugenio IV e il trasferimento della sede vesco-
vile turritana (Cargeghe, 2008). It seems that part of the walls of the archiepiscopal com-
plex was built as an addition to include the religious area, organized around the round
Figure 19.12 Iglesias. Eastern side of the walls, thirteenth-fourteenth century,
photo: Stefano Ferrando.