336 Rovina
the former Roman colony) in the northeast (see infra Fig. 0.3).3 By the second
half of the thirteenth century, the system of the giudicati succumbed to a crisis
and came to an end in three of the four kingdoms due to the external econom-
ic and political stimuli that had initially revitalized it. Consequently, the new
urbanization of the island developed directly out of this crisis and was guided
by the new political subjects that emerged from it.
Within this context lay the origins of the city of Sassari, which soon became
the most important mercantile center in northern Sardinia and quickly devel-
oped a political system modeled on the commune of Pisa. The rise of Sassari
reveals certain peculiarities in relation to other principal centers of the time,
including Alghero, Castelgenovese (present-day Castelsardo), and Bosa. The
powerful seigniorial Doria and Malaspina families founded all the aforemen-
tioned cities at the end of the thirteenth century, after the collapse of the giu
dicato of Torres.4 In the same period, after the giudicato of Cagliari fell, the
village of Villa di Chiesa (present-day Iglesias) became the seigniorial center
through the efforts of the counts of Donoratico.5
Medieval Cagliari was refounded by the Visconti as Castel di Castro in 1216,
as a Pisan enclave within the giudicato of Cagliari. The latter’s capital Santa
Igia, the successor to the Byzantine city of Carales, was located on the periph-
ery of the present-day city until it was razed to the ground by the Pisans in
1258 after the last giudice, Guglielmo, took a pro-Genoese political stance.6
Meanwhile, the urban development of Oristano, which started out as the late
3 Gian Giacomo Ortu, La Sardegna dei giudici (Nuoro, 2005).
4 On Alghero, see Antonello Mattone and Piero Sanna, eds, Alghero, la Catalogna, il Mediter
raneo. Storia di una città e di una minoranza catalana in Italia (XIV–XX secolo) (Sassari, 1994);
Marco Milanese, ed., Lo scavo del cimitero di San Michele ad Alghero ( fine XIII–inizi XVII
secolo). Campagna di scavo giugno 2008–settembre 2009 (Ghezzano-Pisa, 2010); and Marco
Milanese, “Archeologia e progetto urbano: le fortificazioni di Alghero,” Archeologia Urbana
ad Alghero 2 (2011). On Castelgenovese, see Antonello Mattone and Alessandro Soddu, eds,
Castelsardo: novecento anni di storia (Rome, 2007). On Bosa, see Alessandro Soddu, ed.,
I Malaspina e la Sardegna (Cagliari, 2005); and Marco Milanese, “Archeologia Postmedievale
e Storia Moderna. Ricerche sulle piazzeforti spagnole della Sardegna nord-occidentale,” in
Contra moros y tur cos: politiche e sistemi di difesa degli stati della corona di Spagna in Età
moderna: Convegno internazionale di studi, VillasimiusBaunei, 20–24 settembre 2005, ed.
B. Anatra (Cagliari, 2008), pp. 569–620. On the territories of the Doria and Malaspina in gen-
eral, see Soddu, I Malaspina e la Sardegna.
5 Marco Tangheroni, La città dell’argento. Iglesias dalle origini alle fine del Medioevo (Naples,
1985).
6 Alessandro Soddu, “Processi di formazione delle città sarde nel XIII secolo: il caso di Santa
Igia,” in Meloni, Simbula, and Soddu, Identità cittadine ed élites, pp. 63–79 and Simbula and
Soddu, “Gli spazi dell’identità,” pp. 143–147.