The Royal Palace of Kahal
Among the most important buildings of the mid-15th century, Palazzo Carcassona stands in the Jewish quarter of Alghero. It stands out for having offered accommodation to representatives of the most illustrious offices (such as royal prosecutors or governors), on official visits or during private stays in the city. For example, the viceroy himself was hosted in the house of Maimone Carcassona, eldest son of Samuele.
Following the edict of expulsion of the Jews from all the territories of the Crown of Aragon (1492), the second son Nino Carcassona abandoned the island and his palace, once requisitioned, was first designated as the Palau Reial.
The main façade, made with sandstone ashlars, presents a decentralized position with an adovellado doorway, refined by a molding that frames it in an arch, a motif that can be traced back to exemplary cases of oblique arches in Valencia, Naples, Palermo and in Sardinia itself.
Even the lowered arch at the building’s entrance recalls the Neapolitan palaces of Antonello Petrucci and Diomede Carafa, and those of several other centers in Southern Italy, Barcelona, Valencia and Mallorca.
Above the portal, in correspondence with the main floor, there are four mullioned windows inserted in a molded rectangular frame and decorated with a small intertwined trefoil arch, which is an equally recurring element in the centers of the Aragonese Mediterranean.
The building had a loggia patio, from which an external staircase developed leading to the reception hall. The barrel-vaulted entrance hall connected the entrance doorway to the open patio.
On the façade, on a block of sandstone, an ovoid projecting face with wide eyes and a half-open mouth peers out, which recalls the sculpture embedded in the Torre della Maddalena, known as Garibaldi's Tower, also in Alghero