Quartu Sant'Elena is the third city in Sardinia, after Cagliari and Sassari, and has all the characteristics of a medium-sized urban center. The church of Sant'Agata is a short distance from the parish church of Sant'Elena.
Ichnography, masonry technique and bare elements inserted in the factory make it possible to date the plant between 1140 and 1160. It was related to a Romanesque church with a single room, with a large semicircular apse oriented to N/E, whose foundations and a prominent section have been found and left exposed.
The title is first mentioned in a letter from 1291, sent by Pope Nicholas IV to the Cagliari archbishop Percivalle (1290-95), which granted indulgence to the faithful who had visited the cathedral of Cagliari and the church of Sant'Agata in Quarto on the occasion of the feast of Saint Mary and their respective patron saint.
In 1280-300, the church was rebuilt by local workers on the same foundations and with the reuse of materials. It always had a single nave but a rectangular cross-vaulted apse, deriving from San Francesco di Stampace in Cagliari, built by Pisan workers between 1274 and 1285 according to Gothic construction methods.
In 1365, together with a vast surrounding area, it was part of the episcopal patrimony, as can be deduced from the inventory of Cagliari's ecclesiastical revenues concerning assets not coming from monastic orders. It can therefore be assumed that it was the property of the bishop even in previous times.
In 1599, as evidenced by the pastoral visit of the Archbishop of Cagliari Lasso Sedeño, the church was in a state of serious decay and repair was ordered.
In 1631, Bishop Ambrogio Machin donated the church and its appliances to the Capuchin fathers, who arrived in Cagliari in 1590, who restored it, making heavy modifications to adapt it to their liturgical needs: they rebuilt the façade, replaced the wooden roof of the nave with barrel and cross vaults and divided the space of the classroom to obtain a large presbytery and a choir behind it, including the ancient rectangular apse.
By 1702, three chapels were built between the buttresses on the right side, again following the characteristic pattern of the Capuchin churches. On the left side, the convent was annexed, whose original structure some rooms remain, and the cloister with the large tank. The new religious complex was named after Saint Francis. The work lasted a long time, mainly thanks to bequests over a period of more than ten years, starting from 1633.
In 1866, the entire complex was confiscated for State Assets and, in 1868, ceded to the Municipality of Quartu, which left the church open for worship and officiated by the Capuchins themselves; since 1886 it has been entrusted to the clergy of the parish of Sant'Elena. The convent, subject to heavy modifications that upset its original structure, was used as a school and in 1925 it was granted to the Quartese priest Virgilio Angioni, founder of the Institute of the Good Shepherd, to establish a shelter for the poor and a hospital. It then became, until 1985, a retirement home for the elderly.
From 1902 to 1925, the church was intended for civil use and returned to the clergy of Sant'Elena only in 1926. During this period of time, to make the space functional for new uses, some sixteenth and eighteenth century niches were filled and rectangular windows opened in the second and third chapels. The restoration work has restored the church - in the meantime renamed
Sant'Agata - to its “cappuccino” appearance. The former convent, restored between 1993 and 2001 with the elimination of superfetations and the highlighting of the oldest structures, houses an art gallery, a museum and a specialized library.
In the vault of the conference room, the large wall painting, from 1899, detached from the vault of the former Town Hall, was placed.

History of studies
The restoration work, carried out between 1990 and 1996, allowed Ida Farci to reread the different construction phases of the monument.

Bibliography
D. Scano, History of Art in Sardinia from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century, Cagliari-Sassari, Montorsi, 1907;
R. Delogu, The Architecture of the Middle Ages in Sardinia, Rome, The State Library, 1953; I. Farci, Quartu S. Elena. Religious art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, Cagliari, Stef, 1988;
R. Coroneo, Romanesque architecture from the middle of the thousand to the early thirteenth century, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1993, page 163; I. Farci-A.
Ingegno, The Church of Sant'Agata in Quartu Sant'Elena. Rereading after restoration, Cagliari, Stef, 1994;
R. Coroneo, Romanesque churches of Sardinia. Tourist-cultural itineraries, Cagliari, AV, 2005, p. 94;
I. Farci, “Church of Sant'Agata and former Capuchin convent of San Francesco in Quartu Sant'Elena”, in The jewels of religious architecture. History, restorations and furnishings from Romanesque to classical style, curated by N. Rossi-S. Meloni, Dolianova, Grafica del Parteolla, 2005;
G. Montaldo, “Church of Sant'Agata and former Capuchin convent of San Francesco: recovery of the architecture of the monument”, in The jewels of religious architecture. History, restorations and furnishings from Romanesque to classical style, curated by N. Rossi-S. Meloni, Dolianova, Graphic by Parteolla, 2005.