Urban Planning And New Towns In Medieval Sardinia 535
By way of contrast, Pisans—particularly sailors—designed Cagliari as an ef-
ficient military naval base. This is evident in the position of the two main tow-
ers, which were aligned a few degrees off northeast. Lighting on the towers
guided ships so as to avoid the shallows when entering the harbor’s protective
palisades. The same line accurately indicated the direction of the route to Pisa,
the colony’s mother city. This direction allowed ships to verify the workings of
their compasses when they departed.77
In its second era, Cagliari’s urban form looked to medieval Pisa in order to
meet its functional, decorative, and aesthetic needs. Shortly after the Pisan
destruction of the capital of the giudicato of Sant’Igia in 1258, they expanded
77 In the Middle Ages, the construction of a new port was based on the determination of
the “direction of entry” for ships, in Pisa indicated by the towers. Some monuments seen
from the sea, described by thirteenth-century port workers, allowed navigators to iden-
tify the city, the port, and the approaching route. To protect the piers, the Pisans planted
hundreds of large piles of wood on the bottom, which were interconnected and accessible
through openings gated by iron chains. The palisades in Cagliari in Sardinia and Vada in
Tuscany were documented in the fourteenth century. Cadinu, “Cagliari vista dal mare.”
Figure 19.14 The original plan of Cagliari’s Castello, based on three parallel curved streets and
governed by the main street called ruga Mercatorum (a-a) between the two gate/
towers (Cadinu 2001, p. 105). In the diagram on the left: the cathedral (A) and
Archbishop’s Palace (B).