Urban Planning And New Towns In Medieval Sardinia 533
Igia, Castro Novo Montis de Castro, which is today Cagliari’s Castello district.
At the time, the capital city was presided over by Giudicessa Benedetta, daugh-
ter of the Marquis Guglielmo di Massa.73 Visconti chose a site on a coastal hill
above Bagnaria, a small merchant port that had been active for over 100 years,
near the churches of Santa Lucia di Bagnaria or Civita and San Salvatore di
Civita nearby Sant’Igia (Fig. 19.13). Visconti’s builders quickly traced the streets,
row houses, and wall system on a preexisting medieval site where there were
traces of the outbuildings of the San Saturno monastery, of the Giudice, and of
the church of Santa Maria of Cluso.74
The designers of the project for Cagliari’s Castello district seem to have
taken inspiration from a similar project in Bern, a city founded from scratch a
few decades earlier and based on three curved streets.75 The fortification of the
73 The use of the churches was ceded to the monks of San Vittore di Marsiglia in 1119. Cadinu,
“Il rudere della chiesa.”
74 The new city plan appears homogeneous and unitary in terms of its conception and
implementation. To the east, the fortifications seem to follow the outline of the Roman
theater located on the slopes of the hill at the Tower of the Elephant and appear similar
to medieval Volterra. Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale, pp. 67, 111, tab. 23; Marco Cadinu,
Andrea Pirinu, and Marcello Schirru, “Letture catastali, rilievi, e documenti per la let-
tura delle architetture e dell’urbanistica dell’area di Santa Croce del Castello di Cagliari,”
in I catasti e la storia dei luoghi = Cadastres and the History of Places, ed. Marco Cadinu
(Rome, 2013), p. 518, tab. 73. Regarding ownership of the hill areas and the legal dispute
between the Giudicato and the Pisan families, see Corrado Zedda and Raimondo Pinna,
“Fra Santa Igia e il Castro Novo Montis de Castro. La questione giuridica urbanistica a
Cagliari all’inizio del XIII Secolo,” Archivio Storico Giuridico Sardo di Sassari n.s. 15 (2010),
pp. 125–187. Further documents (dated 1217) describe some of the first dwellings (casa-
linum) near the city’s main square, the platea comunis and the land subdivision plan of
the new city. The casalini, buildable lots assigned for 29 years, were present in the settle-
ments of the era and are indicative of the urban project of founding a new city. Cadinu,
Urbanistica medievale, p. 65; Marco Cadinu, “I casalini e il progetto della città medievale,”
in Cadinu, I catasti e la storia, pp. 301–320. Another example of Pisan planning—in the
same years around 1215—is Piombino, in Tuscany; see Giovanna Bianchi, “Dalla proget-
tazione di una chiesa alla definizione degli assetti abitativi della Val di Cornia tra XIII e
XIV secolo,” in Piombino. la chiesa di S. Antimo sopra i Canali. Ceramiche e architetture
per la lettura archeologica di un abitato medievale e del suo porto, eds Graziella Berti and
Giovanna Bianchi (Florence, 2007), pp. 391–406.
75 The cathedral’s central position, along with the streets and cross-streets, confirms the
identity of the design, repeated in Cagliari on a smaller scale. Cultural connections be-
tween the projects for Cagliari and Bern should be sought in the proximity of Pisa and the
empire. Marco Cadinu, “Il tessuto edilizio e urbanistico medievale,” in Cagliari tra passato
e futuro, ed. Gian Giacomo Ortu (Cagliari, 2004), pp. 301–315; on Berna, see Guidoni, Il
Medioevo, pp. 278–284.