Urban Planning And New Towns In Medieval Sardinia 519
referred to in later documents as isteri bezzu, the “old building,” still in use in
the fourteenth century.43
43 The second known seat of the Giudice was planned during the great urban expansion at
the end of the thirteenth century but was still being completed in 1340s; see Falchi and
Zucca, Storia della Sartiglia, p. 140. The axes of the two monumental towers of the new
walls erected in 1290 and 1293 were in fact oriented towards this site. The tower-gate axis
frequently indicates the position of the military and administrative center of the medi-
eval town. Cagliari’s three towers adopt a similar strategy. Steri (a word that in fourteenth-
century Latin indicated a large palace or a fortified residence, also in use in Sicily) is cited
in the fifteenth century. The text, which concerns property boundaries, can be found in
Figure 19.8 Oristano’s reconstructed plan ( from a nineteenth-century cadastral plan, by
Cadinu, Zanini, and the cooperative La Memoria Storica, 1997). Two sets of walls
enlarged the city from the giudicato era to the thirteenth century. Around the
area indicated by the letter (A), the highest point in the city is the hypothetical
location of the first giudicato site (Palazzo Vecchio), which orients the axes of
the two monumental towers erected in 1290 (1) and in 1293 (2). The convents and
churches of Santa Chiara ( f ), San Francesco ( fr), San Domenico (d), the ruga
mercatorum-via Dritta system (aa and bb) are shown. Outside the walls, the
large triangular market square named Via Aristana (g) and the via Vinea Regum
(cc) (Cadinu, 2001).