Urban Planning And New Towns In Medieval Sardinia 515
thirteenth century, Santa Igia also experienced an urban renewal guided by
Tuscan culture.36
However, previous urban forms may not have differed greatly from those
preserved during that same era in the inner cores of Oristano and Sassari,
which did not experience the Ligurian and Tuscan cultural incursions of the
twelfth century. For example, it is likely that builders used earth construction
for dwellings, a technique common to all the towns in the Cagliari area, many
of which can be documented in the twelfth century. The same technique was
recorded in Oristano and, at least from documentary evidence, seems to have
been widespread in Sassari as well. It must be noted that, in these cities, fea-
tures of giudicato urban form—common courtyards and alleys, crooked streets,
organic organization of the street network—are also close to Mediterranean
Islamic cultural currents.
The analysis of Sassari’s cadastral fabric and its road structures indicate
clearly the location of its original urban core: not a small rural village, but a
center, defined by a wide thoroughfare with a market square function (Platha),
a median axis of a dense residential fabric served by narrow blind alleys and
common courtyards; this area also needed to be defined and defended (not
yet necessarily by stone walls). The original historical center was placed in the
northwestern area of the current city walls. This type of urban development
can be found in other Islamic Mediterranean cities dated between the ninth
and the tenth centuries.
Sassari has the structure of a vivid center of international trade activities.
The documents relate to the presence of the judge of Torres—a resident in
nearby Ardara—in 1113–1127, but we have to imagine a previously active
relevant both on the topographic level and the historical evaluation of the political figure
of Giudice Guglielmo di Massa. The location of the city of Santa Igia, contrary to the usual
assumption that it was kilometers away from the ancient Roman forum, would be adja-
cent to and in close contact with what were to become hamlets outside the thirteenth-
century Pisan city. See Pinna, Santa Igia.
36 Similar villages with regular subdivisions were in use at the time in Tuscany. It is pos-
sible, for example, that the road network consisting of the historic Corso, which was bi-
furcated and directed towards the church of San Pietro dei Pescatori (first mentioned by
this name in 1089), can be regarded as the main street in Santa Igia (Pinna, Santa Igia). Its
topography and the type of row housing development have been dated to the early thir-
teenth century in Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale. See Guidoni, Arte e urbanistica; Enrico
Guidoni, Il Medioevo. Secoli VI–XII, Storia dell’Urbanistica (Rome, 1991).