Ploaghe

A nineteenth-century theory held that Ploaghe was the heir of a Roman centre called Plubium, destroyed in the time of the Vandals and rebuilt under the name of Ploraka; that theory, however, rested on the Carte d'Arborea, the famous forgeries, and the mythical Plubium is not the origin of the present town. What is documented is the village of Plouake, which in the Middle Ages belonged to the giudicato of Torres, in the curatoria of Florinas. When the giudicato fell, in 1259, the villa passed to the Malaspina, then to the Aragonese, then to the giudicato of Arborea, and around 1350 returned for good to the Aragonese, who absorbed it into the kingdom of Sardinia. Under them Ploaghe was the head of a barony, held first by Serafino di Montanyans and then by the Aymerich, from whom the town was redeemed in 1839, when the feudal system was abolished; in 1795 it had taken part in the risings against the feudal lords. The town's motto says that favourable events do not raise up, nor adverse ones cast down.

Ploaghe was a bishop's seat from the eleventh century until 1503, when the diocese was suppressed and united to that of Sassari: the church of San Pietro, in the main square, is the old cathedral. Beside it stands the monumental cemetery, unique in Sardinia because its gravestones are written in Logudorese Sardinian. In the parish house, instead, is kept one of the most important collections of paintings on the island, put together in the nineteenth century by the Ploaghe canon Giovanni Spano, who gathered works from other private collections and from other churches as well: there are paintings from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, among them works by Michele Cavaro, Francesco Pinna, Giovanni del Giglio, the Maestro del Capitolo and Giovanni Marghinotti, together with Venetian, Lombard, Genoese, Tuscan, Roman, Flemish and Spanish canvases. Two kilometres from the town stands the church of San Michele di Salvennor, of the twelfth century, what remains of the Vallombrosan abbey built by Mariano the Second of Torres.