544 Cadinu
layouts, as well as locating the churches of Sant’Antonio and Santa Maria del
Mare alongside one another on the coast.93
5 Late Medieval Iberian Town Planning in Cagliari
The evolution of Cagliari’s harbor district, and in particular its radical renova-
tion after the Aragonese conquest of the city in 1327, provides further evidence
of the autonomy of medieval urban planning, as compared to the ancient city.
The large influx of settlers from the Iberian Peninsula precipitated plans for
the growth of the area.94 The new layout featured a grid of straight streets and
square blocks, erected on a new medieval level, which was evidently achieved
by burying the ruins of the Roman city under meters of earth.95 The design ig-
nored Cagliari’s previous orientation in favor of a new image and modern plan-
ning principles that aligned with the expectations of the recent immigrants
from Barcelona and Aragon. Besides the street grid, Catalan urbanism also
93 For fourteenth-century documents on the walls, see Zedda, Le città della Gallura. The map
is in Archivio di Stato di Torino (Sez.Riun., Uff. Gen Fin., Tipi [sez.II], Terranova, m.233)
and published in Foiso Fois, Torri spagnole e forti piemontesi in Sardegna: contributo alla
storia dell’architettura militare (Cagliari, 1981), p. 77. For the reconstruction of the medi-
eval walls’ perimeter, see Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale, p. 136, tab. 48. Marco Cadinu and
Raimondo Pinna, “Azioni urbanistiche pisane per il controllo del litorale maremmano e
dello spazio tirrenico (1290–1313),” in La Maremma al tempo di Arrigo. Società e paesag-
gio nel Trecento: continuità e trasformazioni, eds Ignazio del Punta and Marco Paperini
(Livorno, 2015), pp. 95–111.
The two churches, along the coast—external from the medieval settlement of
Terranova, were considered the only continuity evidence of a square nearby the harbor
or the forum of Roman Olbia, Giovanna Pietra, “Il foro di Olbia,” L’Africa Romana 18, vol. 3
(2010), pp. 1843–1863, in particular, p. 1851.
94 For the history of the Aragonese conquest of Cagliari see Rafael Conde y Delgado de
Molina and Antonio Maria Aragó Cabañas, Castell de Cáller. Cagliari catalano-aragonese
(Cagliari, 1984).
95 The landfill separating the current level from that of the Roman era, and on which the high
medieval cities grew, varies greatly, from 6 m thick at Sant’Eulalia to the Santo Sepolcro
area, where it is non-existent. See variations in the eastern area, at the Monserrato bas-
tion in Rossana Martorelli and Donatella Mureddu, “Scavi archeologici nelle chiese di
Sant’Eulalia e del Santo Sepolcro: notiziario,” in Quaderni del Dipartimento di scienze ar-
cheologiche e storico-artistiche, Università degli studi di Cagliari 1,1 (2004), pp. 317–318.