Subjects
Subjects
The urban position of the church corresponds to the area at the foot of the Castle, where the descent to the port begins through the Marina district.
The church was built on a small oratory dedicated to the saint that existed in the 15th century. From 1695, the oratory was entrusted to the Sicilian congregation, which made improvements and expansions. In 1740 it was ceded to the Order of the Observant Friars Minor who built the façade and the porch that connects it to the convent, the latter now headquarters of the Military Command of Sardinia.
The work to complete the complex was entrusted to the Piedmontese military engineer Augusto Della Vallea, who was in Cagliari between 1735 and 1744 waiting for the island to be fortified.
The façade of the church, sober and elegant, is marked by pilasters surmounted by Piedmontese capitals and divided horizontally by moving, slightly projecting bandages. In the lower part, the door is framed between two empty niches which correspond, in the upper one, another two containing the statues of the Franciscan Saints Bonaventure and Anthony of Padua.
At the top, above the large central window, a double-inflected tympanum also surrounded by an embossed frame.
The bands or frames, which characterize the façade of the church, continue even in the connecting body to the former convent. The motif above the porch is interesting: in the center, above the arch, is an elegant wrought-iron balcony, above which a niche opens up in which the statue of the Immaculate Virgin is housed. Characteristic of Della Vallea in the façade of Santa Rosalia, as in his other projects, is the structural insertion of statues, with which the fusion, typically late Baroque, between architecture and sculpture takes place.
The interior of the church has a single nave divided into four bays interspersed with round arches with a barrel vault set on a slightly projecting frame, which overlooks the arches of the side chapels, different in shape and depth. In the space in front of the apsidal area, decorated with mosaics made by Franco d'Urso, stands the dome set on an octagonal drum on which eight windows with stained glass open. In the church there is the burial of Saint Savior of Horta, the name under which the building is often popularly referred to.
History of studies
The church is the subject of a brief fact sheet in Salvatore Naitza's volume on late seventeenth-century and purist architecture (1992).
Bibliography
R. Salinas, “Piedmontese Architects in Sardinia”, in Proceedings of the X Congress on the History of Architecture, Rome, 1959;
A. Cavallari Murat, “Giuseppe Viana, Savoy architect in Sardinia”, in Proceedings and Technical Review of the Society of Engineers and Architects in Turin, XIV, n. 12, December 1960;
A. Cavallari Murat, “Survey on the expansion of eighteenth-century Piedmontese architecture in Sardinia”, in Bulletin of the Center for Studies for the History of Architecture, n. 17, 1961;
C. Maltese, Art in Sardinia from V to XVIII, Rome, De Luca, 1962;
A. Cavallari Murat, “The architecture of the eighteenth century in Sardinia”, in Proceedings of the XIII Congress on the History of Architecture, Rome, 1963;
V. Mossa, From Gothic to Baroque in Sardinia, Sassari, Carlo Delfino, 1982; Cagliari Historic Districts. Marina, Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana, 1989;
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 18.
Content type:
Religious architecture
Province: Cagliari
Common: Cagliari
Macro Territorial Area: South Sardinia
POSTAL CODE: 09124
Address: via Torino, s.n.c.
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![[Cagliari. Facciata della chiesa di Sant'Agostino in via Baylle]](data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mNkYAAAAAYAAjCB0C8AAAAASUVORK5CYII=)
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