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City
of Alghero - Italy
CITY
OF ALGHERO
Alghero is a city overlooking the sea. Perhaps
its name comes from the leaves of "oceanic
Posidonia", wrongly called "alga"
(seaweed), which grows abundantly along the sandy
beaches.
The city centre, overlooking the sea and rich
in picturesque spots and beautiful buildings,
is the most interesting part of the island and
attracts tourists thanks also to its society life.
The city was founded in the XII century by the
Genoese Doria family; but in XIV century it was
conquered by the Spanish. Today Alghero's language
and folklore are those ones of the Catalan people.
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- Cathedral
The stately Cathedral overlooks the opposite
small Piazza Duomo (Duomo Square). The pronaos
(i.e., colonnade) is made up of doric columns.
The gable (i.e., triangular upper part of
the facade) dates back to 1820. The portal
is below the bell tower.
The Cathedral's Gothic-Aragonese bell tower
is 40 metres high; it is formed by five
hexagonal storeys and ends with a spire.
Without any doubts it is the most beautiful
bell tower of Sardinia.
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- Torre dello Sperone (Spur Tower)
Torre dello Sperone is also called Sulis
Tower because it was the prison where the
revolutionary from Cagliari Vincenzo Sulis
stayed when he was sent into exile to Maddalena
from 1799 to 1821.
Like the other Spanish towers in Alghero,
Torre dello Sperone is a massive round-planned
building, made up of two overlapped rooms.
They are covered with rib-ceilings and they
are linked together by a helicoidal-shaped
stairway made in the thickness of the wall.
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(Church of St Francesco)
Alghero, 0 mt |
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- The Church of St Francesco
The Church's facade is quite simple: in
the middle you can see two rose-windows
belonging to two different building stages.
The lower rose-window is romanesque and
dates back to the second half of the 14th
century whereas the upper one is Czech
and dates back to the end of the 16th
century.
Also the cloister shows two different
building stages: the lower floor was built
during the 15th century, the upper floor
dates back to the 18th century. The capitals'
decorations are original therefore it
is one of the best preserved cloister
of the island.
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Beach
hotels |
the most beautiful beaches
of Italy in the best hotels |
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