Alghero 377
of 1505 already refers to the vico Sanctae Crucis.46 After an initial reference in
1505, a source from 1593 reports that in that year work progressed on the iglesia
nova de Santa Creu, inasmuch as testamentary legacies were registered with
that aim.47 The church of Santa Croce, attested in the earliest historical maps,
which show not only the urban wall but the interior of the city at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, was demolished in 1912, on the occasion of the
construction of the maritime hospital in Alghero.
The excavation of Piazza S. Croce studied the transformation of the syna-
gogue-church-hospital in order to verify the reliability of local tradition and
the hypotheses of historians, who claim that the synagogue and the church of
S. Croce consisted of the same building, or that the structure was partly reused,
or that it had undergone drastic demolition and reconstruction. The excava-
tion uncovered an ample portion of the sixteenth-century church, beneath
which the ground floor of a medieval structure with traces of artisanal iron
production, datable to between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was
found.48 A rescue intervention, critical to the stability of historical structures
in the area of the church of Santa Croce, was conducted in 2001, and brought
to light traces of a staircase that might constitute the first archaeological evi-
dence of the ritual bath (mikve) of Alghero’s synagogue.49
4.2 Sites, Spaces, and Buildings in the Jewish Area
According to written sources, the Jewish quarter extended around the syna-
gogue; in it were found large palazzi of the more affluent families (such as
the Carcassona and the Cohens), but also multistoried houses with shops and
storerooms on the ground floor, courtyards, and gardens, as well as simpler
structures.50 This variety in building typology corresponds to the articulated
social stratification of the aljama, and was confirmed in recent archaeological
investigations.51
The large architectural complex of the monastery of Santa Chiara—
located fully within the old Jewish quarter—has been taken on by a restoration
46 Antonio Nughes, Alghero. Chiesa e società nel XVI secolo (Alghero, 1990), p. 95.
47 Antonio Serra, “L’arxiconfraria de l’Oraciò i Mort,” L’Alguer 39 (1995), p. 11.
48 Milanese, “Alghero. Le trasformazioni.”
49 Milanese, “L’Alguer. Deu anys de arqueologia.”
50 Tasca, “La comunità ebraica di Alghero”; Tasca, Ebrei e società in Sardegna.
51 Marco Milanese, “Del Quarter al Monestir. Noves excavacions en l’àrea del Monestir de
les Isabel-lines a L’Alguer,” L’Alguer 21 (2008), pp. 4–6; Marco Milanese, Giuseppe Padua,
and Giampaolo Zizi, “Dal quartiere medievale al Monastero. Nuovi scavi nell’area del
Monasterio del Pilar ad Alghero (2007/2008),” in Atti del V Congresso di Archeologia
Medievale, Foggia, 30 Settembre–2 Ottobre 2009 (Florence, 2009), pp. 219–223.