Alghero, Casa Doria

Casa Doria, window exhibitions

The building is the second building on Via Principe Umberto, between the episcope, the Curia and the cathedral, in the ancient center of the city's religious power. Today it is the property of the Episcopal Curia.
The building known as “Casa Doria” and more correctly called “Palazzo Machin”, was built around the middle of the 16th century by workers who built various religious and civil buildings in Gothic-Catalan style in Sardinia.
The first historical information of the building dates back to 1575, the year in which the list of assets owned by Pere Tibau, a wealthy Catalan merchant naturalized from Alghero and an exponent of the city's oligarchic class, and owner of the building, was drawn up. It is therefore presumable that Tibau had his residence built a few decades before that date.
The inventory shows that the current configuration of the building does not correspond to the original one, following the various changes made over the centuries: originally the floors were in terracotta or majolica, and the floors were made of juniper beams, but already in the early seventeenth century the building, purchased by the Machin family, was renovated by modifying its plan and replacing the wooden beams with brick floors. The building was heavily damaged by the bombing of the Second World War, to the point that today the only original part that remains is the façade.
The main façade overlooks Via Principe Umberto. Narrow and particularly tall, it is made of square sandstone ashlars and is divided by two marcapiano frames; the whole is crowned by a projecting ledge. The decoration of the façade expresses one of the freshest examples of Gothic-Catalan sculpture, with the inclusion of elements of Italian Renaissance origin, testifying to the eclectic taste of the client.
The entrance portal is framed by pilasters that support an architrave that has two vases next to two lions with a wreath, all elements of Renaissance origin; in the center stands the heraldic coat of arms that the Tibau wanted to insert at the entrance of their residence, even though they did not have a noble title.
The windows are not affected by Italian examples, taking as a model exclusively the Catalan taste of the time; they are framed by columns and lintels with scales, and decorated with perforated shelves, peducci and lintels that have decorative motifs that are always different, testifying to the high level of quality, in some ways even virtuosic, of the workers who created the building.

History of studies
The house is the subject of a brief summary in the volume by Francesca Segni Pulvirenti and Aldo Sari on late Gothic and Renaissance architecture in Sardinia (1994).

Bibliography
S. Colomo, Guida ad Alghero e dintorni, Sassari, 1984;
F. Segni Pulvirenti - A. Sari, Architettura tardogotica e d'influsso rinascimentale. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1994, scheda 52;
A. Ingegno, Il centro storico di Alghero: appunti per una ricerca, Oristano, 1996;
L. Deriu, Alghero: la città antica, Sassari, 2000.