All about Sassari, Sardinia
With its cluster of narrow streets around a medieval core, Sardinia’s second city, Sassari, has a contrasting atmosphere to capital Cagliari. While Cagliari was the base of Pisan power in the Middle Ages, Sassari was ruled by Genoa and then Aragon, and the city retains a Spanish flavour. The Jesuits built Sardinia’s first university here in the 1500s and it exists to this day.
Sights in the town are mainly in the old quarter. This is a charming tangle of piazzas and alleyways with the main road of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele cutting through the centre. They include the 13th century walls (at least in part, with just a tower left of the original 36 plus four gates). There is the Renaissance Palazzo d’Usini, one of the oldest houses in the town and now the public libarary, and the Palazzo Ducale (now the town hall) dating from 1775. On the other side of the Corso is the medieval Piazza Tola.
There is the Fonte Rosello, the fountain built in 1606 by Genoese craftsmen, and the University Palace (1611-51, and the former Jesuit college). At the heart of the town is the Duomo, the cathedral of St Nicholas of Bari, featuring Baroque embellishments on the Aragonese-Gothic body of the building, and dating from the 15th and 16th centuries. Other main churches include the 13th century early Gothic Santa Maria di Betlem, the Church of the Most Blessed Trinity and the 12th century St Peter in Silki. See too the Aragonese palace of the Duke of Vallombrosa.
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