Settimo San Pietro, Church of San Pietro

The town is located in the Campidano area of Cagliari, about 13 km N/E from the capital.
The oldest attestation on the parish church of Settimo San Pietro dates back to 1442, the year in which the Archbishop of Cagliari Matteo Ioffre consecrated it. However, it does not seem possible to return any structure of the current building to this date, unless we consider the hypothesis that the church was built simultaneously with the church of San Giacomo in Cagliari, whose construction (or rather that of the bell tower) dates back to the same years (1438-42).
The hypothesis could be supported by the fact that there are immediate similarities between the ribs and the gemstones of the star vaults in the two presbyters (the main chapel in the church of Cagliari can be considered contemporary with the bell tower). However, it seems unlikely that outside the city of Cagliari, the construction of new factories would be undertaken, at least until the hostilities between the Crown of Aragon and the rebels of the Marquisate of Oristano (1478) ended permanently. Therefore, the building's factory must be located at the beginning of the 16th century.
In a notarial act of 1564, the clients, the construction of the presbytery of the parish church of Sant'Ambrogio in Monserrato, indicated as a model - to the picapedrers who should have done the work - the main chapel of the parish church of Settimo, then on that date it already existed.
The building preserves the primitive late-Gothic façade, the nave and the presbytery, while the chapels and the last two orders of the bell tower are additions from the 17th and 18th centuries.
The façade has a flat terminal with battlements, an acutely arched trumped portal, a large buffered oculus (in the center of which is now a quadrangular window), a square-barreled bell tower with an axis on the s side, while on the d side there is a redone buttress.
The nave is divided into five bays, marked by the undercuts of the pointed vault; some of the side buttresses remain free, because few chapels, and at different times, have been opened along the aisle. There are only five chapels, and the last two are so deep that they act as a transept. The other three are all different, and one of them, the one under the bell tower, is precisely dated because an inscription attests to its construction, together with the bell tower, in 1627. This chapel, although built in the 17th century, has decidedly Gothic shapes, with the inflected access arch ending “in a lily”, which is decorated with stylized foliage.
The second chapel in front of the transept, despite its pointed arches and its starry vault, is behind the arms of the transept and the chapel, with an elliptical vault, in front of it.
The main chapel, raised above the classroom, has a square plan and is lower and narrower than the aisle. Five pendulous gems adorn its starry vault. Two oblique buttresses, visible from the outside, balance the thrusts of the arches diagonally across the vault.

History of excavations

Previously studied by Renata Serra, the church is the subject of a summary fact sheet in the volume by Francesca Segni Pulvirenti and Aldo Sari on late-Gothic and Renaissance-influenced architecture (1994).

Bibliography
R. Serra, “The parishes of Assemini, Sestu and Settimo San Pietro. Notes for a history of late Gothic architecture in Sardinia”, in Proceedings of the XIII Congress on the History of Architecture. Sardinia, I, Rome, 1966, I, pp. 225-243;
R. Serra, “Sardinian-Catalan architecture”, in The Catalans in Sardinia, edited by J. Carbonell-F. Manconi, Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana, 1984, pp. 125-154;
F. Segni Pulvirenti - A. Sari, Late Gothic and Renaissance-influenced architecture. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1994, sheet 9.