378 Milanese
team with the goal of transforming the area into a seat of the Architecture
Department of the University of Sassari. Due to the operative needs of the
restoration project, emergency archaeological excavations were conducted
in various parts of the monastery and appended church complex, and have
restored important archaeological traces related to the transformation of the
area from the urban quarter (which it was until around 1630) to the religious
foundation.
Excavations of the nave of the church of Santa Chiara have shown evidence
of what the zone looked like before the establishment of the monastery, when
it was occupied by a neighborhood with streets that passed through it. The
most interesting data that emerged were the remains of medieval buildings,
datable to between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the Jewish
quarter occupied the site.52 These foundations of houses were aligned with the
continuation of the present Via Sant’Erasmo (in the Middle Ages, the Carrer
de Sant Elm) and overlooked a packed-earth roadbed, which was discovered
beneath the oldest pavement of the church. The western wall of the church, on
the other hand, was probably erected on the axis of the cluster of homes that
bordered the street on the opposite side. The outlets of some of the streets into
the sea were eliminated in the seventeenth century for the sake of constructing
the church and monastery (Carrer de Sant Elm; Carrer de les Monges; Carrer de
Santa Creu), and existing buildings in the area were acquired and demolished
to make space to build the religious complex. References to this operation are
found in the papers of the archive after 1632, when the first acquisitions of
buildings in the zone had concluded.53 Some buildings already lay in ruins or
were abandoned, while others were still inhabited, such as the one acquired
in 1648 by the mestre Alexandro de lo Frasso, who resided in it. Parts of other
houses demolished for the construction of the monastery were rediscovered
behind the apse of the church and in the traces of the dirt street (Carrer de
Sant Elm) that headed towards the sea.
Houses—according to the types noted in medieval documents with regard
to the Jewish quarter—were developed solely on the ground level and featured
courtyards (patis decsoberts). Cecilia Tasca has used a document from 1381 to
describe one such residence in the aljama: a house with a courtyard situated
on a road that went to Castellac, which once belonged to the married Jewish
52 Milanese, “Del Quarter al Monestir”; Milanese, Padua, and Zizi, “Dal quartiere medievale
al Monastero.”
53 Antonio Serra, Povere donzelle: monache di clausura nella Alghero del seicento (1641–1700)
(Alghero, 2007).