oristano
 
ORISTANO is a flat, unprepossessing place, whose old walls have been mostly replaced by busy boulevards. However, the centre has a relaxed and sophisticated ambience, and although it is four kilometres from the sea, the town is attractively surrounded by water, its lagoons and irrigation canals helping to make this a richly productive agricultural zone. The southern lagoon, the Stagno di Santa Giusta , is one of the two homes of Sardinia's flamingo population: if they're not at Cágliari they're bound to be here, sharing the water with the coracle-like flat-bottomed boats still used by the lagoon's fishermen.

The Town
In the heart of the town is Oristano's central symbol, the marble statue of Eleonora d'Arborea , presiding over the piazza named after her. Eleanor was the giudice of the Arborea region from 1384 to 1404 and is the best known and best loved of Sardinia's medieval rulers, having been the only one who enjoyed any success against the island's aggressors. Ensconced in the last of Sardinia's giudicati to remain independent of the Aragonese, Eleanor united local resistance and, despite the desertion of her husband, Brancaleone Doria, to the enemy, succeeded in negotiating a treaty in 1388 that guaranteed her a measure of independence. She later backed this up by a tactical alliance with the Genoans, and it was with Genoan help that Brancaleone, returned to the fold, managed to occupy Sássari on her behalf.

Eleanor's military achievements collapsed soon after her death from plague in 1404, though the most enduring benefit of her reign survived her by several centuries: the formulation of a Code of Laws ( Carta di Logu ), first mooted by her father Mariano IV but embodied by Eleanor in a legal document in 1395. Covering every aspect of civil legislation, this document was adopted in 1421 by the Aragonese and extended throughout the island. As the eighteenth-century English lawyer and traveller John Tyndale put it: "The framing of a body of laws so far in advance of those of other countries, where greater civilizations existed, must ever be the brightest ornament in the diadem of the Giudicessa." Eleanor's statue, carved in 1881, shows her bearing the scroll on which the laws were written, while inset panels depict her various victories.

Although it's called the Casa di Eleonora , the fine house - now derelict - at Via Parpaglia 6-12 (left off Via La Marmora, which leads off the piazza) could not in fact have been her home, as it was built over a century after her death. She is unequivocally buried in the fourteenth-century church of Santa Chiara , in the parallel Via Garibaldi.

Off Via Parpaglia, Piazzetta Corrias holds Oristano's Antiquarium Arborense (July-Sept Tues-Sun 9.30am-1pm & 5-7.30pm; Oct-June daily 9am-8pm; L4000/¬2.07), one of Sardinia's most absorbing museums, housed in a sixteenth-century merchant's house. As well as rotating exhibitions of its extensive collection of nuraghic, Phoenician, Roman and Greek artefacts, there's a gallery of medieval and Renaissance art and an imaginative scaled-down reconstruction of Roman Tharros.

At one end of Via Parpaglia, linked to Piazza Eleonora d'Arborea by the narrow pedestrianized Corso Umberto, is Piazza Roma, where pavement bars are clustered around the base of the San Cristóforo bastion, erected by the giudice Mariano II in 1291. This was the fulcrum of Oristano's fortifications, the only other survivor of which is the smaller Portixedda ("little gate") tower, at the bottom of Via Mazzini (off Via Roma). Both are open for visits during the summer, each holding a small display of odds and ends relating to local history.

Oristano's Duomo stands in a spacious square up Via Duomo, which is behind Piazza Eleonora. Though started in the thirteenth century, most of the present duomo is a Baroque renovation, retaining only parts of the apses from its original construction. With the fourteenth-century onion-roofed belltower and the next-door seminary, it forms an atmospheric ensemble.

At the other end of Via Duomo stands the nineteenth-century church of San Francesco , incorporating the remains of a much older Gothic building. The space in front, merging with Piazza Eleonora d'Arborea, forms the main arena for Oristano's annual Sa Sartiglia .