Gothic-Italian architecture

Oristano, Church of Santa Chiara

The fall of the judiciary of Cagliari into Pisan hands, in 1258, is the historical premise for the construction of the cathedral of Santa Maria and the walls of the Castello district, which ended in 1305-07 with the towers of San Pancrazio and the Elephant, designed by Giovanni Capula and still surviving.
The final phase of medieval Sardinian architecture is dominated by the affirmation and diffusion of the Gothic language. The peculiarity of the island's history, however, requires a distinction between Italian Gothic, which was practiced in the 14th century as a natural development of Romanesque, and Catalan Gothic, introduced by the Aragonese conquerors.
Since the middle of the 13th century, the presence of the Franciscans determined the introduction to Sardinia of architectural and decorative typologies linked to Italian Gothic styles.
Among the most important Italian Gothic buildings, the cathedral of Cagliari stands out, which preserves substantial parts of the transept added at the beginning of the 14th century and, among other things, houses the “William's Pergamon”, a masterpiece of European Romanesque sculpture.
In 1323 the infant Alfonso landed on the island and in 1326 the surrender of the Cagliari Castle in Aragonese hands determined the end of Pisa in Sardinia. During the siege, the sanctuary of Our Lady of Bonaria was built, the oldest Gothic-Catalan architecture on the island, imitated by the chapel of Sant'Agata in the Royal Palace of Barcelona.
After the fall of Castello, in the cathedral of Santa Maria, the Gothic-Catalan chapel was built to the right of the altar, showing off the Aragonese coat of arms: it is the sign of the takeover of the city, followed by the long war with the Arborea, destined to end only in 1478, with the Aragonese conquest and with the cultural and artistic catalanization of the entire Sardinia.