Urban Planning And New Towns In Medieval Sardinia 525
was similar to other Mediterranean urban fabric that constituted the first
towns in the island during the giudicato era.54 The Genoese family of the
Malaspina founded a castle on top of the hill after the mid-thirteenth
century.55 Churches such as Sant’Antonio, San Leonardo, and Santa Lucia were
built in connection with commercial meeting places, near the port facilities
and the roads; they likewise included hospitality functions.56 Outside the origi-
nal centers of Oristano, Cagliari, and Bosa, historic cartography shows large
courts that are recognizable as the continuation of that inn or warehouse insti-
tution, an analogous architectural typology that survived until the beginning
of the modern era (Fig. 19.11).57
54 Unlike the cases cited in Sassari and Oristano, which formed in the eleventh- and twelfth-
century plains contexts, the village of Bosa grew along a hill near the river Temo, most
probably in the twelfth century, like the village near the Guidicato castle of Posada, see
Cadinu, Urbanistica medievale, pp. 30–31, 59, tab. 11.
55 The river village on the landing existed before. The act of fortifying and enclosing the first
settlement with walls establishes a stable context. The relationship between the village
and castle can also be studied in Cagliari. In this city, the port of Bagnaria and the church-
es of San Salvatore and Santa Lucia, known as “de Civita,” were near a village outside the
walls of Santa Igia at least from 1119, the year of their grant to the monks of San Vittore di
Marsiglia. The fortification of the Castello was the result of Pisan military action that took
place after nearly a hundred years. Marco Cadinu, “Il rudere della chiesa di Santa Lucia
alla Marina di Cagliari. Architettura, archeologia e storia dell’arte per il recupero di un
luogo della città medievale,” Archeoarte 1, supplement (2012), pp. 544–575. My interpreta-
tion still poses unresolved questions vis-à-vis historical documentation. The study of the
dominion of the Malaspina, in Alessandro Soddu, ed., I Malaspina e la Sardegna (Cagliari,
2005), LIV, n. 188, indicates that the town of Bosa developed concretely only under the
Arborea, in the fourteenth century. The excavations carried out by the University of
Sassari, directed by Marco Milanese, found no traces in the castle prior to the mid-thir-
teenth century. But these data, which are partial and mainly refer to the castle, are not
sufficient to determine the urban history of the far more complex area connected to the
nearby Roman town of Bosa and the Bosan insula episcopalis as well. A port belonging to
the Giudice di Torres is documented in 1202 and 1210; so his first city must be there almost
at the end of twelfth century, see Marco Cadinu, “Fondaci mercantili e strade medievali.
Indagine sulle origini di Bosa,” in Bosa. La città e il suo territorio dall’età antica dall’età an-
tica al mondo contemporaneo, eds Antonello Mattone and Maria Bastiana Cocco (Sassari,
2016), pp. 278–292.
56 The church of Sant’Antonio, for example, was present outside the first urban settlements
of Cagliari, Bosa, Oristano, Terranova di Gallura, Sassari, Iglesias, Posada, and Orosei, and
connected to specific hospitality functions.
57 Fondaci were generally constructed according to a standard plan. In particular, those
in Bosa, Sassari, and Cagliari present architectural similarities. See Cadinu, Urbanistica