The church is in the district that was the hub of political and religious power in Cagliari between the 13th and 19th centuries.
The church has a single nave with three chapels on each side, each of which is covered from barrel vault to barrel. The walls are punctuated by rudentate piles with a composite capital and frame in pairs the chapels surmounted by an arch in the middle. The capital of the pilasters rests on a strongly protruding frame that runs along the perimeter of the church. The presbytery shows inside an apse added last century by the Piedmontese engineer Ribotti, together with the new altar and the new flooring. The tax of the original apse, square according to the Jesuit model, is still visible. The façade consists of two orders separated by a high band that continues on the two side elevations. In the lower order, the portal opens at the top of a short staircase, surmounted by a broken curvilinear tympanum in the center of which is the Brondo coat of arms. The upper order, framed by two pairs of Doric pilasters, is divided into five mirrors. In the annoyance, which exceeds the central aisle in height, there is a rectangular opening that shows the sky. This detail, of strong symbolic value, recalls examples throughout southern Italy, in particular in the Apulian and Sicilian Baroque. The curvilinear crowning is made of two flat volutes facing each other that fold up in graceful girals. The connecting volutes are, on the other hand, less elaborate and end with two vertical die elements, surmounted by a sphere and a spire, which recall the flame order, linked to the counter-reform culture. The church has two bell towers, one with a sail parallel to the façade but in a backward position, the other a tower with a square barrel and a small dome near the presbytery. The absence of a dome is common in the early stages of Jesuit construction.
The church of Santa Croce was built around 1661. The date appears from a walled plaque in the prospectus that also recalls the name of the benefactress Donna Anna Brondo of the Marquis of Villacidro, whose bequests were used for the construction of the church, which stands on the ancient Synagogue, abandoned by the Jews in 1492. In 1563, Archbishop Antonio Parragues de Castillejo asked Laynez to assign at least two preaching fathers; in fact, the Jesuits, already present in Sassari, were missing in the city of Cagliari. In 1564, ten Jesuits were sent, who took possession of the College formed by modest houses overlooking the church. Giandomenico de Verdina, a Ticino Jesuit student of Tristan, will adapt and transform the houses to make them more suitable for the establishment of the Company. It is likely that not on the ruins, as the Spano maintains, but inside the same Synagogue, dedicated to the Holy Cross, the Jesuits had begun to officiate. In fact, in an act dated 1565, and drafted by the notary Bartolomeo Carnicer, Secretary of the Council, there is talk of a church that was “plurimis abhic annis constructa et aedified”, built for many years. The Brondo legacy then served to radically expand and transform it. This hypothesis is supported by recent excavations carried out during a long restoration that is still in progress. In fact, inside the church, roughly in the middle of the aisle, a wall was found perpendicular to the apse and plastered inside and out. This could be the perimeter wall of the Synagogue that later became a Christian church, with an entrance on Via Corte d'Appello.
When the Company was suppressed in 1773, the entire property passed to the State and was handed over in 1809 to the Mauritian Order, which further modified it.

History of studies
The church is mentioned in the “Guide” by Canon Giovanni Spano (1861). It is the subject of study in Salvatore Naitza's volume on late-seventeenth-century and purist architecture (1992). The most recent contribution is by T. Kirova and D. Fiorino.

Bibliography by
G. Spano, Guide to the city and surroundings of Cagliari, Cagliari, Timon, 1861;
Art and culture of the 17th and 18th centuries in Sardinia. Proceedings of the national congress, edited by T.K. Kirova, Naples, Italian Scientific Editions, 1984;
A. Piseddu, “The Churches of Cagliari: Holy Cross”, in Almanacco di Cagliari, 1991, without pages;
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism, series “History of art in Sardinia”, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992; T. Kirova - D. Fiorino, The religious architecture of the Baroque in Sardinia, Cagliari, Aipsa, 2002.