How Was Alghero Built

Alghero is a fortified colonial town, and it still reads as one from the water.

The walls

The defences are Aragonese and Spanish, built and rebuilt from the fourteenth century into the sixteenth as artillery changed what fortification had to do. Seven towers survive, along with a continuous run of bastions on the seaward side: low, thick, angled walls designed to absorb cannon fire rather than to stand tall against ladders. The stone is a warm local limestone that goes gold in low sun.

The towers

Torre di Porta Terra guarded the landward gate, Torre dello Sperone the seaward corner, and Torre di San Giovanni stands within the walls, now a museum space. Each is squat and round, built for guns.

The grid inside

Unlike most Italian old towns, Alghero's interior is close to regular: narrow straight lanes on a rough grid, because it was laid out as a planted colonial town rather than grown organically. The lanes are paved in stone and mostly too narrow for vehicles.

Catalan Gothic

The cathedral's bell tower is the clearest single piece of Catalan building on the island: an octagonal tower with a pointed spire and a Gothic doorway, quite unlike the Pisan Romanesque that dominates the rest of Sardinia.

What was lost

The landward walls came down from the 1860s as the town outgrew them, and the ring road and the public gardens follow their line. Only the seaward half of the circuit survives, which is why Alghero looks fortified from the water and open from the land — a half-demolition that, by accident, kept the better half.

Fertilia

Five kilometres away, a complete 1930s planned town in rationalist style, built on reclaimed marsh.