Sassari, Church of San Sisto

The church is one of the oldest parochial churches in the historic city center.
The church of San Sisto is mentioned in documents for the first time in 1278, when the five parishes of the walled city were established. By 1848 it was completely rebuilt in neoclassical forms by the architect Angelo Maria Piretto.
It has a simple façade, characterized by an upper tympanum supported by two pilasters on each side. Centrally, the elevated portal on a staircase leads into the interior a single nave, covered by a barrel vault, with three chapels on each side. The interior furnishings of the chapels are almost always of the modern age and therefore after the construction of the church, with the exception of the main altar next to the structure and the neoclassical altar of the second chapel of St. In neoclassical style, there is also the pulpit located in the room on the d side, where the eighteenth-century statue of Saint Sixtus is located.
Around 1950, the Sassari painter Costantino Spada created the frescoes in the apse basin and those above the triumphal arch, depicting the Last Supper, the Apotheosis of the Immaculate Virgin and the Martyrdom of Saint Sixtus. Among the characters depicted, there is a portrait of the same author, in addition to those of the then archbishop of Sassari Arcangelo Mazzotti and the parish priest, who commissioned the frescoes. By the same author are two canvases depicting a Crucifixion and a Baptism of Christ.
Of great interest is the polychrome wooden crucifix, in life size, ascribed to the medieval period.

Bibliography
The church of San Sisto in the city of Sassari. Drawings by Italo Ghio, notes by Gavino Perantoni Satta, The New Sardinia, 1961, n.186;
A. Pala, The wooden crucifix of Saint Sixtus in Sassari, 2009.