Catalan Alghero: Historical Perspectives from the Vantage Point of Medieval Archaeology

CHAPTER 14 Catalan Alghero: Historical Perspectives from the Vantage Point of Medieval Archaeology

Marco Milanese

1 Introduction

Alghero (L’Alguer) became a Catalan city after 1354, when the Crown of Aragon definitively appropriated it after a long siege led by Peter III, “the Magnanimous,” who is also referred to as Peter IV of Aragon. Along with Cagliari, Alghero was the strategic stronghold that controlled the island in the medieval and early modern era. It was for this reason that its character as a military fortress played an important role in the view of the Crown of Aragon and, particularly, that of Spain. Until 1495, Alghero retained a more noticeably Catalan character, but the expulsion of the dense community of Algherese Jews in 1492 led to a demographic and economic crisis that Ferdinand the Catholic tried to check by conceding Algherese citizenship to Sardinians. Today, Alghero survives as a Catalan-speaking enclave on Sardinian soil, a peculiarity already meticulously studied at the end of the nineteenth century by Eduard Toda i Güell.1 The historic city of Alghero was founded on a peninsula stretching out into the sea, oriented northwest, with an inlet protected from north- and south- west winds (Fig. 14.1). The old city was circumscribed within the circuit of a sixteenth-century wall (visible today only in intermittent stretches due to drastic demolition in the late nineteenth century). Since 1996, this circuit wall has been the object of numerous planned, preventative, and rescue archaeological interventions conducted cooperatively by the Amministrazione Comunale of Alghero, the archaeological Soprintendenza of Sassari and Nuoro, and the Department of History of the University of Sassari (Fig. 14.2). These many different interventions varied according to the scale of the area excavated, as well as the motives for and period of execution, but they were always conducted in anticipation of or during the execution of public works. Not a few of these interventions took place along the lines of the historic city wall, and for this reason involved either segments of the medieval de- fensive circuit or significant units of the modern defense works. The historic

1 Eduard Toda i Güell, L’Alguer: Un poble català d’Itàlia (Sassari, 1981 [1888]).

Figure 14.1 Aerial view of the historical center of Alghero, outlined by the medieval city walls.