540 Cadinu
a large natural harbor on the ruins of the imposing Punic/Roman conurbation
of Olbia, a civita grew around the cathedral of San Simplicio, which was built
of gray granite in a Romanesque style associated with the late eleventh century
and known in Pisa as early as 1114.87 The new city was called Terranova after the
Tuscan Terre Nuove (i.e. Terranova Bracciolini and Terranova San Giovanni),
from whose design principles it was planned.88 The determining factor for
Terranova di Gallura was the design of its city blocks, which not only resembled
those of Tuscan cities built in the same period (notably San Giovanni Valdarno
near Arezzo, dating from 1299 and attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio),89 but also
Cagliari’s Villanova district, which Pisa had founded to the east of the Castello
before 1275.90 In this model, lot division led to the design of a block type with a
narrow interior alley serving the rears of row houses. The municipality of Pisa
fashioned Terranova around a large road crossing that linked San Simplicio,
outside the walls, with the port (Fig. 19.17).91
87 Angelo Castellaccio, “Olbia nel Medioevo. Aspetti politico-istituzionali,” in Mastino,
Da Olbìa ad Olbia, pp. 40–42; Dionigi Panedda, Olbia e il suo volto (Sassari, 1989), p. 12;
Corrado Zedda, Le città della Gallura medioevale. Commercio, società e istituzioni (Cagliari,
2003). Regarding the church cited in 1114 in curatoria de Civita in cimitero sancti Simplicii,
see Renata Serra, La Sardegna (Milan, 1989), p. 325.
88 The name of the city was evidenced as Terranova di Gallura in 1308 and earlier in 1305:
Vicente Salavert y Roca, Cerdeña y la expansión mediterránea de la Corona de Aragón,
1297–1314 (Madrid, 1956), doc.123, p. 160. Marco Cadinu, “Il progetto della città nella
Sardegna medievale,” in Paesi e Città della Sardegna, eds Antonello Sanna and Gianni
Mura (Cagliari, 1999b), vol. 2, pp. 91–101. Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale, pp. 91–93. Dating
is further defined in Zedda, Le città della Gallura. See also Marco Cadinu, “Olbia: una
Terranova medievale in Sardegna,” in Città nuove medievali: S. Giovanni Valdarno, la
Toscana, l’Europa, ed. by Enrico Guidoni (Rome, 2008), pp. 28, 149–156, figs 27–29. The
new city, whose urban forms were not recognized in the past, came down to us as a small
historic nucleus within an extended modern conurbation. Archaeological studies on the
area, focusing on the Roman period, regarded the nucleus to be a result of the early medi-
eval or Byzantine eras (Spanu, La Sardegna bizantina, pp. 117–118).
89 Guidoni, Arte e urbanistica, pp. 15–156, 224–234; Friedman, Florentine New Towns; Guidoni,
Storia dell’Urbanistica, pp. 83–96; Enrico Guidoni, Arnolfo di Cambio urbanista (Rome,
2003).
90 Marco Cadinu and Laura Zanini, “Urbanistica ed edilizia nella Cagliari medievale: il borgo
di Villanova e le sue case,” in Case e torri medievali. I, Atti del II convegno di Studi “La città
e le case. Tessuti urbani, domus e case-torri nell’Italia Comunale (secc. XI–XV )”, Città della
Pieve, 11–12 dicembre 1992, eds Elisabetta De Minicis and Enrico Guidoni (Rome, 1996), pp.
49–58.
91 A possible episcopal village was destroyed, most likely along with other small settle-
ments in the area, to populate the city, something that occurred frequently in Tuscany.
Carlo Fabbri, “Le terre nuove fiorentine del Valdarno superiore: preesistenze, programmi,