Sassari, Palazzo Manca di Usini

The complex, within the historic walls of the city, is home to the Municipal Library of Sassari.
Palazzo Manca di Usini represents the first example of Renaissance-style civil architecture in Sardinia. Built in late Gothic forms around the first decades of the 16th century, it was expanded by the will of Don Jayme Manca, Baron of Usini, in 1577, as attested by the engraving on the key of the portal's archivert, above the dedicatory epigraph (ILLVSTRIS DON IACOBVS MANCA DOMINIS OPIDI DE VSINI). The enlargement involved the addition of the front body and the façade, originally divided into two orders. Currently, the building houses the premises of the municipal library.
The building has undergone numerous changes over the centuries, the most conspicuous of which in the 18th century with the addition of the third floor; other interventions have involved the interiors and the opening of two accesses on the sides of the portal; however, the reading of the original characters is not compromised.
The first order has a portal symmetrically flanked by two identical Manca family signs and two windows in the mezzanine. The second order has five identical windows. The third order (18th century) repeats the design of the second in the arrangement of the windows.
The portal represents the dominant element of the entire prospectus. Framed by two Doric semicolumns grooved on a pedestal surmounted by a double lintel inside which is the frieze with the dedicatory epigraph, it is divided into a rectangular frame that frames a round arch. Both the vertical and horizontal elements are wrapped in continuous fan-shaped smooth pinholes; the unashlar parts of the frame are adorned with diamond tips, a pattern repeated even in the square drawers of the inner part of the feet and the underbone of the arch.
The windows all have the same shape, differing from those of the mezzanine only by their smaller size; the window sill and the rectilinear overhanging tympanum are both molded; the jambs and the lintel are decorated with smooth and alternating diamond pinholes, while inside the motif of the unpronounced diamond spikes returns to square coffers.
From the portal there is access to a large broken vaulted atrium, on which the round arches open with an intradox carved with rectangular coffers for the accesses to the side rooms and to the staircase that leads to the second floor. The coat of arms of a bishop of the Manca family is walled up in the back wall of the atrium.
A recent restoration, in addition to the Renaissance elements, has also brought to light the late Gothic ones, which can be seen in the remains of two windows with perforated lintels on the wall of the main floor that overlooks the inner courtyard, walled up and replaced by later rectangular windows; in the Gothic epigraph walled up on the façade between the second and third floors; and in the niche on the second floor of the building, in the façade room above the atrium, with a small cross vault with gemma and sculpted peducci and traces of painting and traces of painting Racemi blue on an ochre background in the wedges.

History of studies
The building 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;
R. Salinas, “The architecture of the Renaissance in Sardinia. The first examples”, in Studi Sardi, XIV-XV, 1955-57), part II, pp. 333-354;
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;
V. Mossa, From Gothic to Baroque in Sardinia, Sassari, Carlo Delfino, 1982; A. Sari, “The Architecture of the Sixteenth Century””, in Sardinian society in Spanish times, edited by F. Manconi, Quart, 1992,
pp. 74-89;
F. Segni Pulvirenti - A. Sari, Late Gothic and Renaissance Architecture. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1994, sheet 60;
M. Porcu Gaias, Sassari. Architectural and urban history from its origins to the 17th century, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1996.