Resumen de Leggere e rappresentare l’architettura militare. Forma e progettodella cinta muraria di Castelsardo in epoca moderna
Andrea Pirinu, Giancarlo Sanna
The walls of Castelsardo were erected by the Doria family in the second half of the 13th century. The fortress, located on a promontory to control the coastline of north Sardinia, defended by steep slopes and cliffs and almost impossible to conquer, will require, in modern times, only a few interventions to strengthen his defences. During the Spanish Kingdom, from the second half of the sixteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth century, intervention and maintenance are documented; among these the realization of embankment, aimed at increasing the resistance of the walls to the force of heavy artillery, suggested several times by military experts in the sixteenth century or present in the memory of the Viceroy Vivas (1625); this is the case of the “Spalti Manganella”, reinforced in the period 1640-1660 by an embankment with thickness more than 2 meters, a work carried out at a time of great difficulty for the island, threatened by the danger of French attacks. Even in the Piedmontese era the repairs of the fortress were minimal and the project to create a defensive system of the city gate (located on the ground front) was not implemented. This intervention, dated 1740, is described in a document signed by the military engineer Craveri and testifies that the repairs to be carried out were of little importance; this project indicates the realization of additional works to make inaccessible the main door of the stronghold. Starting from the analysis of cartographic representations, archive documentation, knowledge of modern fortifications and with the contribution of recent archaeological excavations, the contribution proposes a first graphical reconstruction of the transformations happened in modern age.
