Ghilarza, Church of San Pietro di Zuri

The church of San Pietro di Zuri is on the immediate outskirts of the modern town of Zuri. In the twenties of the last century, the church and the town were transferred from their original site, along the banks of Tirso, upstream, to avoid submersion following the creation of the artificial basin of Lake Omodeo. Therefore, they are decontextualized with respect to the historic place, but interesting as an example of urban planning from the early fascist era.
The church of San Pietro Apostolo is one of the most significant monuments of medieval island architecture. It represents one of the rare dated buildings that can also be assigned to an architect identified by name, thanks to an epigraph that also informs the client's identity. The monument's suggestion comes mainly from the construction material, the red andesite from the quarries of the Ghilarza plateau.
The factory dates back to 1291 by the epigraph on the façade, which celebrates the master Anselm of Como and the client abbess Sardinia de Lacon. The plan, developed about 34 m long, is that of a longitudinal classroom with a wooden roof. The apse today is N-shaped, but was originally canonically oriented.
The façade has a shaped shoe base, which runs along the entire perimeter, and has clearly started at half height. The lower part is divided into three round arched mirrors molded in a double torus and eyebrows. The portal opens in the central mirror. The bezel and jambs are covered internally by a torciglione frieze, while lintels and jambs are adorned with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures. The whole thing is reunited in a deep thrombus.
The upper part of the façade was rebuilt in 1504. The rectangular window in line with the portal replaced a double window whose remains have been recovered. The same height of the façade must have been greater, as evidenced by the fragment of the frame with intertwined arches visible in the right pillar of the large sailing bell tower with a double order of archacute mullioned windows, aligned to the left of the façade.
The apse has a semi-hexagonal plan and a hemispherical basin roof. It is not the Romanesque apse, which had a semicircular shape, but the one rebuilt by 1336. Inside, a three-lobed niche has been created whose right ophitic pillar comes from the top of the original façade.

History of studies The
architect Carlo Aru, who oversaw the dismantling and reconstruction of the church, is responsible for an exhaustive monograph on the monument (1926). Subsequently, there are contributions by Raffaello Delogu, Salvatore Naitza, Renata Serra and Roberto Coroneo, who clarify the peculiarities of a building that shows transitional characteristics from Romanesque to Gothic.

Bibliography
C. Aru, San Pietro di Zuri, Reggio Emilia, Officine Grafica Reggiane, 1926;
R. Delogu, The Architecture of the Middle Ages in Sardinia, Rome, The State Library, 1953, pp. 201-206;
S. Naitza, “From Here to There”, in the Almanac of Cagliari '86, Cagliari, 1985, without pages;
R. Serra, Sardinia, series “Romanesque Italy”, Milan, Jaca Book, 1989, pp. 379-381; R. Coroneo, Romanesque Architecture from the Mid Thousand to the Early '300, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1993
, sheet 144;
R. Coroneo-R. Serra, Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque Sardinia, series “Italian Artistic Heritage”, Milan, Jaca Book, 2004, pp. 233-241; R. Coroneo, Romanesque Churches of Sardinia. Tourist-cultural itineraries, Cagliari, AV, 2005, pp. 68-69.

How to get there
You leave the SS 131 at the height of Abbasanta and after a few kilometers you turn right on SS 131 dir, and then take the junction to D. on the SP 27 and again to D. on the SP 28, to Zuri (hamlet of Ghilarza), where the church of San Pietro is located.