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Every street sign in the old town of Alghero is written twice.
Italian on top. Underneath, in smaller letters, the same street in a different language: carrer instead of via, plaça instead of piazza. It is not decoration and it is not a tourist board initiative. Around a fifth of this town still speaks it.
This is the only Catalan-speaking city in Italy, and it has been for six hundred and seventy years. Here is how that happened, and what to look for.
What happened in 1354
The Crown of Aragon spent the fourteenth century taking Sardinia, and Alghero resisted. It was held by the Genoese Doria family, it was besieged, it fell, it rebelled, and in 1354 Peter IV of Aragon took it for the second time and decided not to have the problem again.
What he did next is the reason this article exists. Rather than garrisoning the town, he emptied it. The Sardinian and Ligurian population was expelled, and Alghero was repopulated with settlers brought in from Catalonia: from Barcelona, from Tarragona, from the Balearics.
They brought their language, their building trades, their food and their law, and because the town was walled and faced the sea rather than the interior, all of it stayed. For centuries Alghero traded west with Barcelona rather than inland with Sardinia, and the island around it stayed a foreign country.
The Spanish held it after Aragon, then the Savoyards, then Italy. The language survived all three.
The language
It is called alguerès, and it is a variety of Catalan preserved on an island for six centuries with almost no contact with its parent.
Linguists find it fascinating for the same reason: isolated languages hold on to older forms. There are words in everyday use here that Barcelona dropped a very long time ago, and the Sardinian and Italian around it has pushed in at the edges. It is Catalan, but it is Catalan that took a different road in 1354 and kept walking.
It has legal recognition. Street signs are bilingual by statute, it is taught in some schools, and there is local radio in it.
You will not hear it in a restaurant aimed at visitors. You will hear it, if you listen, between two older people in a bakery at eight in the morning, or across a market counter, or between the men on the boats unloading at the quay. The tell is the rhythm, which is flatter and more clipped than Italian, and the x and ll sounds that Italian simply does not have.
What to look for in the buildings
The settlers brought their masons, and the old town is built in a style that stops at the walls.
Doorways. The clearest tell. Look for pointed arches with plain deep mouldings and a carved boss at the apex, in honey-coloured stone. This is late Catalan gothic, and it is severe compared to anything Italian gothic: fewer mouldings, less decoration, more mass. Once you have seen three you will see them everywhere in the old town and nowhere outside it.
The cathedral. Santa Maria has an argument going on at the front, where a neoclassical facade was stuck onto a much older building. Go inside and round the back. The apse and the bell tower are the Catalan gothic original, sixteenth century, and the tower is the better piece of architecture in the town.
Windows. Paired narrow lights under a single arch, sometimes with a slim column between them.
The walls themselves. Begun under the Catalans, finished and thickened by the Spanish against artillery, which is why the towers are round and squat rather than tall. Round towers deflect cannon; square ones shatter.
What to look for on the table
The kitchen came with the settlers too.
Aragosta alla catalana, the town’s signature dish, is lobster served cold over raw sliced onion and tomato with oil and lemon. That is a Catalan way of treating shellfish, not an Italian one, and it is the most obvious survival of the whole business. Where to eat it is in where to eat in Alghero.
The sweets are the other tell: dense almond-based things closer to Spanish pastry than to Italian baking, and usually sitting under a glass dome at the end of a bar counter rather than on a menu.
Where to see it, in an afternoon
An hour and a half, on foot, and free.
Start at the Torre di Porta Terra, the old land gate, which is where the walled Catalan town began and the modern Italian one stops. Walk in and immediately look up at the first street sign you pass.
Work through the lanes toward the cathedral, reading signs as you go and looking at doorways. Go round to the bell tower.
Then get up onto the ramparts and walk the sea side. This is what the town was: a Catalan port facing west, with its back turned on the island behind it. Standing on the wall looking out at open water with no land in it, the geography of the whole thing makes sense.
Finish in a bar in the lanes at about eight, when the town is out, and listen.
Is it a museum piece?
No, and that is the interesting part.
The language is genuinely under pressure. Fewer young people speak it than their grandparents did, which is the story of every minority language in Europe. There are schools teaching it and a certain amount of civic pride, and there is also the plain arithmetic of a small town inside a large country.
What you are seeing is not a preserved heritage site. It is a living town that happens to have kept something, and is having a fairly ordinary modern argument about how hard to hold on.
What to book before you come
The heritage here is free to walk through. Two things put a voice to it.
- A guided walk through the old town. A local guide is the difference between reading the bilingual signs and understanding why they are there.
- A food and wine walk. The Catalan inheritance is on the plate as much as on the street signs, and this is where you taste it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Alghero Catalan?
The Crown of Aragon took the town in 1354 after repeated rebellions, expelled the existing population, and repopulated it with settlers from Catalonia. The walled town traded west toward Barcelona rather than inland, so the language, architecture and food brought by those settlers survived.
What language do they speak in Alghero?
Italian, and also alguerès, a variety of Catalan that has been spoken here since the fourteenth century. It has legal recognition, street signs in the old town are bilingual by statute, and roughly a fifth of the town still speaks it.
Can you hear Catalan spoken in Alghero today?
Yes, though not in places aimed at visitors. Listen between older people in bakeries and markets in the early morning, or among the men working the boats. The rhythm is flatter than Italian and it has sounds Italian does not.
What Catalan buildings are there in Alghero?
The old town is built in late Catalan gothic: pointed stone doorways with plain deep mouldings, paired narrow windows, and the apse and bell tower of the cathedral of Santa Maria. The sea walls were begun under the Catalans and thickened by the Spanish.
Is Alghero worth visiting for the history?
Yes, and it is what makes the town different from the rest of Sardinia. It is the only Catalan-speaking city in Italy, the language is still living rather than reconstructed, and the whole thing is legible on foot in an afternoon.
Read also: The Best Things to Do in Alghero | The Nuraghi Near Alghero | Victoria’s Complete Guide to Alghero
