Il baluardo Dusay nell’area di San Pancrazio a Cagliari: una architettura militare «in transizione» tra medioevo ed età moderna

In Europe, around the middle of the fifteenth century, the employ of the guns started a process of adaptation and modernization of medieval defenses that change war strategies. In the last three decades of the fifteenth century war strategies progress very quickly without reaching a level of reliability that doesn’t allow a complete abandonment of traditional systems. The period between the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century is characterized by a search for solutions that guaranteed an adjustment of the defenses where it was not possible a complete remake of the existing fortifications. The architectures that characterize this historical moment have been defined as transitional, but in fact represent precise answers to specific conditions of war. The historical urban landscape of Cagliari preserves some example of these design models; one of these is the bulwark "Dusay", a work realized in the early sixteenth century in the area of San Pancrazio for the defense of north face of the Castle district. This model, harshly criticized by experts of the time, will find a reuse at the service of the tenaille built in the period 1558-1578 and his constructional phases are described in the archival documents and drawings made by the military engineers. Here lies the specificity of this bulwark; its presence and conservation, its stylistic and constructive analysis allow the observation of design solutions employed in the Spanish Mediterranean between the end of the fifteenth and the second half of the sixteenth century.