Sassarese

The territory that includes Sardinia’s second city, Sassari, from which it takes its name, stretches out in the area that surrounds it, up to the opening of the beach of Platamona, the beach of the sassaresi (Sassari’s inhabitants), with whom it is extremely popular in the summer months.

The city of Sassari, the home of a famous university, has a generally modern aspect, but it preserves among its walls some medieval corners of particular historical relevance, beginning from its centre, characterised by narrow streets that lead around within, and with numerous churches that lay testimony to the different epochs: the cathedral, devoted to San Nicola, in Gothic style; the church of Santa Maria di Betlem built in the 13th century as a custodian of the chandeliers, enormous wooden candles representative of the different arts and trades, that go on procession on 14 August; San Pietro di Silki, Roman plan with only a single aisle. A neoclassic style villa is home to the national Museum that houses important prehistoric and medieval finds, in addition to a considerable amount of ethnographic material.

Going out of the city the church of San Michele di Plaiano is met, an old medieval abbey that preserves its original truss covering.
Of one of a kind is the megalithic monument of Monte d’Accoddi, built on a pre-existing village of huts in prehistoric age.

Of great interest is Porto Torres, an ancient Roman colony in the gulf of the Asinara, that still preserves the remains of the thermal baths Palazzo del re barbaro (Building of the Barbaric king) (3rd –4th century) and the Romanesque-Pisan style church of San Gavino that houses on its insides the funeral relics of the three Turritan martyrs, Gavino, Proto and Gianuario.