Cagliari, Church of Sant'Anna

The church is in the ancient district of Stampace, formed in medieval times and important for the presence of the church of Sant'Efisio, not far from the parish church of Sant'Anna.
It was built in 1785 on the site of a documented church dating back to 1263. The idea of the project is attributed to the Piedmontese architect Giuseppe Viana, a student in Turin for several years of the architect Benedetto Alfieri. Arriving in Cagliari in 1770, after his success with the construction of the Carmine church in Oristano, he obtained the title of Royal Architect for the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1777. The majestic church of Sant'Anna clearly shows features of Piedmontese Rococo and in particular recalls the cathedral of Carignano, near Turin, the work of Alfieri.
The factory experienced several slowdowns over time, mainly due to lack of funds. The church was opened to the public in 1818 when it still had no main altar and the second bell tower.
During the 1943 bombings, the roofs collapsed extensively and the nineteenth-century altars of the chapels of the Blessed Sacrament and Blessed Amedeo of Savoy were also seriously damaged (the statue of the saint, by Andrea Galassi, dates back to 1828). The careful renovations and restorations (1947-58) have restored the original appearance.
The building is scenographically inserted between the houses of the neighborhood, preceded by wide and sinuous three-ramp staircases. The majestic curvilinear façade, with its concave central part, is divided in two orders by a projecting frame. In the lower order, inserted in the concave part, two pairs of columns with ionic capitals frame the door surmounted by a broken tympanum to which, in the higher order, corresponds to a rose window. Lighter and brighter is the upper part punctuated by pillows and connected with scrolls, from which, set back from the façade, two powerful bell towers emerge, the first raised in 1800 and the second in 1938.
Internally, the church has a single large room with a longitudinal plan, covered by three domes different in shape and size. The first domed dome, close to the bell towers, covers an ellipsoidal environment on which four chapels open; the second, on an octagonal drum resting on pillars flanked by columns, covers the transept; the last, smaller, covers the presbytery. Along the entire perimeter of the wall there is a molded frame on which the domes are set and the access arches to the chapels open. Finally, in the presbyteral area, there are eight stands overlooking the great scenery of the altar and the very tall chapels of the transept.

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, 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, Delfino, Sassari 1982;
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 28;
M. Dadea-S. Mereu-M.A. Serra, Archdiocese of Cagliari, series “Churches and sacred art in Sardinia”, Cagliari, Zonza, 2000.