532 Cadinu
construction of walls in opposition to the giudicale authority, whose headquar-
ters were in nearby Ardara. Enzo, the son of Federico II di Svevia, and appoint-
ed king of Sardinia, lived in Sassari—if only for a brief period—from 1238.69 It
is unclear how the project for the city walls evolved, but these were still under
construction in 1316, when statutes dictated rules for the portion of the wall
that each power was obliged to erect every year.70 Imperial Pisan influence is
possible in light of the city’s modern military system, complete with a castle
controlling the northern entrance.71
Guglielmo di Massa had failed in his attempt to unify the island under one
Crown and after his death in 1214 his realms were attacked by Ubaldo Visconti,
a Pisan authority at the head of a powerful faction, who had once held the of-
fice of Potestà in Siena.72 Visconti founded a new city in the environs of Santa
corner tower, “Turondola.” The original circuit of the walls was smaller, in the shape of an
elongated hexagon, similar to well-known contemporary examples in Italy. See the the
mid-thirteenth century new village of Carcassonne, the new village of San Saturnin in
Pamplona, or the walls of Reggio Emilia. Guidoni, Storia dell’Urbanistica, pp. 45, 81, fig. 7;
Guidoni, Arte e urbanistica, pp. 25–47.
69 Alessandra Cioppi, Enzo, re di Sardegna. Dal Giudicato di Torres alla prigione di Bologna
(Sassari, 1995); Mauro Sanna, “Enzo rex Sardinie,” in Bologna, Re Enzo. E il suo mito. Atti del
Convegno di studi, Bologna 11 giugno 2000, ed. Antonio Ivan Pini and Anna Laura Trombetti
Budriesi (Bologna, 2001), pp. 201–221; Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale, pp. 74–79, figs 26–31.
70 The city was the seat of political events alternating among Giudicato, Pisan, and Genoese
power. Regarding Sassari, see Gian Filippo Orlandi, Thathari pietra su pietra (Sassari,
1985); Porcu Gaias, Sassari; Ilario Principe, Sassari, Alghero, Castelsardo, Porto Torres
(Rome, 1983).
71 This influence may have arrived in Sassari as a result of Aragonese cultural renewal in the
fourteenth century. On the other hand the construction of a castle on the wall of the city
was widespread in the architecture of Federico II, Fois, Castelli della Sardegna. Similarly,
the rustication of Sassari castle and its plan could be traced to the mid-thirteenth century,
along with the castle of San Michele in Cagliari. The military walls in ashlar, present in
the towers of Cagliari and Oristano, indicate inspiration by Federico, but cannot be dated
with certainty. The Sardinian rustication, attributed wrongly in the past to the persistence
of Roman or Punic monuments, are actually the expression of the Pisan pro-imperial
political party in Sardinia; Elisabetta De Minicis, “Tradizione e innovazione delle tecniche
murarie duecentesche: il bugnato ‘federiciano’,” in Temi e metodi di Archeologia Medievale,
ed. Elisabetta De Minicis (Rome, 1999), pp. 145–156.
72 The military defeat of Guglielmo di Massa in Tuscany on the river Frigido in 1214 opened a
new era that was exploited by his adversaries, with important consequences in Sardinia;
see Pinna, Santa Igia. The Potestà was an office similar to the mayor, usually foreign,
which citizens elected on an annual basis and whose substantial power was regulated by
written law. Ronzani, “I Visconti e la loro politica fra la Tuscia e la Sardegna.”