Subjects
Subjects
The complex is within the historic walls of the city, near Porta Macello, a city sector where numerous public utility services were concentrated in the 16th and 17th centuries, such as the Macello, the Pescheria and the Casa del Peso.
Frumentaria represents one of the rare survivals of sixteenth-century civil construction in Sassari. It is the first wheat warehouse built specifically in Sardinia for the storage of wheat purchased at a regulated price and kept as a reserve in case of war or famine.
There are two construction phases, like the bodies that make up the building: from 1597 to 1598, the first body was built, but with the reconstruction of the roof already in 1600; from 1607 to 1608 the second. Therefore, the warehouse is divided into two contiguous two-storey buildings, similar both in size and in their rectangular plan, separated by a common dividing wall resulting from the union of the two walls leaning against each other. The roofs are double-pitched and the gutter channel runs inside the dividing wall, and then drains with a gargoyle in the center of the façade.
In the façade on Via delle Muraglie, four rectangular doors opened, of which those of the second body, original, have the lintel resting on shelves and are bordered by blocks of strong stone. The windows, made of the same material, are small and irregularly shaped as those on the lower floor, while those on the upper floor are larger and more regular. Above the main door are the coats of arms of Aragon and Sassari, the latter eroded to the point of being almost illegible. Along the side of Via Rosello, rectangular windows opened on both floors, wider than those on the ground floor.
Inside, on the lower floor, there are four rooms, two per body, developed along the longitudinal axis, covered with a barrel vault and connected through round arches open in the thick reinforced shoe-like walls. In the vaults of the central warehouses, there were small square openings that allowed the grain collected to pass through the upper warehouses. The body built in the seventeenth century differs from the sixteenth-century one by the presence of transverse arches along the barrel vaults. The use of this type of roof was no longer adopted in Sardinia until 1580, the year of the rebuilding in Renaissance forms of the church of Sant'Agostino, to a design by the architect Giorgio Palearo Fratino; in Sassari it was welcomed as an element of innovation imported by the Jesuits (similar roofs were in fact made in the apse and sacristy of the church of Jesus and Mary - today Saint Catherine - around 1587).
Through an external staircase and a door with lintel supported by shelves with volutes and ovoli carving, you can access the rooms on the upper floor, marked by arches of irregular width and height that support the wooden roof.
The Palazzo della Frumentaria continued to serve as a grain warehouse until it closed in 1833; later it was used as a barracks (1852), as a carpentry shop (from 1880) and then as a warehouse. Currently, after a recovery completed in 2000, its rooms are used as an exhibition space.
History of studies
La Frumentaria 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
E. Costa, Sassari, I, Sassari, 1909;
V. Mossa, Architectures Sassari, Gallizzi, 1965;
E. Costa, Pictorial Archive of the City of Sassari (Diplomatic, Heraldic, Epigraphic, Monumental, Artistic, Historical), edited by E. Espa, Sassari, 1976; P. Cau, The Frumentaria of Sassari. Origin, construction and restoration of the Sassari annonian warehouse, Sassari, 1993;
F. Segni Pulvirenti - A. Sari, Late Gothic and Renaissance-influenced architecture. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1994, sheet 61;
M. Porcu Gaias, Sassari. Architectural and urban history from its origins to the 17th century, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1996.
Structure category: Monument or Monumental Complex
Content type:
Civil architecture
Usability: Closed
Province: Sassari
Common: Sassari
Macro Territorial Area: Northern Sardinia
POSTAL CODE: 07100
Address: via delle Muraglie, 2
Telephone: +39 079 2008072 +39 079 2015122
E-mail: infosassari@comune.sassari.it
Information on tickets and access: The Palazzo della Frumentaria is temporarily closed for work until a date to be defined. It is recommended to contact the property for information regarding the reopening to the public and possible methods of access.
Access mode: For a fee
Services information: The property is temporarily closed and there are currently no services. The monument is part of the Sassari museum-monumental circuit, for information, you can contact the offices of: Infosassari, Tourist Information Office, Palazzo di Città - Via Sebastiano Satta, 13 - Sassari, or to the mobile multimedia Infopoint in Viale Italia, in the part adjacent to the Garibaldi hemicycle.
Update
Services
Guided tours
Where is it
Images
Video
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Whatsapp
Print
E-mail
Comments