HST ROAD TRIP – ITINERARY n.3

ITINERARY n.3

THE PROVINCE OF SASSARI BETWEEN RELIGION AND CULTURE

Alghero-Porto Torres-Codrongianus-Torralba

One day trip

Alghero is a beautiful coastal town of medieval origins, still has the fortified walls of Aragon.

It is also known as the sardinien Barceloneta, or “the little Barcelona“: the city has in fact preserved the use of Catalan, of which it is a tongue and 22.4% of its inhabitants speak it in the Algherese variant.

About 34 km to the north, you reach the coastal city of Porto Torres, founded by the Roman I century BC, as a colony with the name of Turris Libisonis. The archaeological area includes a vast area of Roman baths, parts of the aqueduct and the necropolis, on which stands the Romanesque church of San Gavino. The Romanesque building, in warm tones of local limestone, was built between the 11th and 12th centuries.

Taking the road to Sassari, you reach after a few kilometers the Monte d’Accoddiarea, a fascinating temple-altar terraces (2800-2600 BC), which was approached to the type of Mesopotamian ziqqurrat.
About 13 km south of Sassari, in the municipality of Codrongianos, reachable by the SS 131, stands the Romanesque church of the Holy Trinity of Saccargia. Isolated in the countryside, considered among the best known of the Romanesque landscape in Sardinia, thanks to the spectacular high bell tower (partly rebuilt) and the technique that alternates rows of light limestone with rows of dark vulcanite.

Along the SS 131 in the south, you reach the territory of Torralba the so-called “nuraghi valley“, in which stands the nuraghe Santu Antine, which is as with Su Nuraxi di Barumini and Losa di Abbasanta the most complete expression of nuragic architecture.