Cagliari, Church of San Domenico

The building is located on a large area of the historic district of Villanova, above Piazza Garibaldi.
The building, originally late Gothic, was seriously damaged by the bombings of 1943. The importance of architecture and the presence of the Dominican community in Cagliari since the mid-thirteenth century influenced the problems of reconstruction, poised between restoration and new forms.
Between 1952 and 1954, the architect Raffaello Fagnoni solved the case in an intelligent way, using the only room of the original, partially preserved church, as the base of the new one that overlooks it and tracing the spaces of the ancient structure.
The upper church has only one nave, narrowed to the presbytery flanked by two altars, which follow the Gothic-Catalan pattern of the primitive structure. A deep choir completes the space covered by the large ovival dome, while the traditional rose window is replaced by a tall, long and narrow window that ends the façade in a horizontal direction.
A tall bell tower, detached from the church, completes the churchyard, unfortunately surrounded by an area still unsettled after the war damage. The exterior stands out for the use of a typical Cagliari material, limestone also used in the interior, where the extraordinary reinforced concrete structures that support the roof start from the side walls. Two bundles of ribs, which recall the Gothic ones, rise to form, intertwining, a dense network that, on a horizontal plane, recalls the patterns of destroyed cruise vaults, adding terracotta stars, not originally foreseen, to the “sails”, in order to hide the inevitable cracks in the plaster.
In the lower church - improperly called the crypt, in reality the original room, which remained uncovered - next to the surviving parts, you can see the reconstruction in height simply shaped and devoid of the original Gothic decoration, in perfect compliance with the rules of the Restoration Charter.
Previously, between 1937 and 1939, the façade of the convent had been rebuilt following the opening of Via XXIV Maggio, which connects the squares of San Domenico and Garibaldi. Angelo Vicario, then an architect in the Superintendence of Monuments of Sardinia, designed a sober and long façade with a central body supported by gigantic pillars, which frame a tall arch just cut out on the smooth surface.

History of studies
A review of the studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the fact sheet in the volume of the “History of Art in Sardinia” on nineteenth-century architecture (2001).

Bibliography of Dominican
Sardinia, Cagliari, 1954;
Ten Years of Sacred Architecture in Italy. 1945-1955, Bologna, 1956, pp. 220-224;
P. Bargellini, “The Rebuilt Church of St. Domenico in Cagliari”, in Faith and Art, 4, 1960, pp. 372-381; M. Pintus, “Architecture”, in Cagliari Historic Districts. Villanova, Cinisello Balsamo, A. Pizzi, 1991, pp. 112-115;
G. Loddo, Guide to Contemporary Architecture in Cagliari 1945-1995, Cagliari, Coedisar, 1996, p. 37; F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy to the End of the 20th Century. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheet 138.