Quartu Sant'Elena, Church of Sant'Elena

Quartu Sant'Elena was born from the aggregation of villages built at different times. The church of Sant'Elena is parochial.
The wall structures found during the restoration work of 1996-99 and the archival documents make it possible to reconstruct the history of the church.
It was built around 1125-50 and consisted of three naves with columns and capitals, at least partly bare, and a semicircular apse in E. The outside was crowned by round hanging arches. The foundations, wall sections and erratic elements remain of this church.
Between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century, the building was rebuilt larger, according to Sardinian-Catalan Gothic methods; in fact, it had a single-aisle room with wooden roof on diaphragm arches and a quadrangular main chapel, turned like a cross, smaller and probably lower than the nave.
Between the second half of the 16th century and 1720, nine chapels were opened between the buttresses, the last of which, wider and deeper than the others, communicated with the presbytery, forming a pseudo-transept. In 1670, a choir was built behind the presbyterial chapel.
The main façade, concluded by the flat and crenellated terminal and sandwiched between two oblique buttresses, housed the arched portal surmounted by the traditional rose window; on the d-side, the secondary entrance opened. Next to the façade was, like today, the octagonal bell tower, similar to the fifteenth-century bell tower of the cathedral of Oristano.
In 1735, the clock tower was raised to the rear of the façade, which, in 1752, on the model of the church of Santa Teresa in Cagliari, was raised, completed by a double-inflected terminal and modified in the portal and rose window, replaced by a window.
These transformations, mainly dictated by dissatisfaction with medieval structures, led, in 1780, to the design of a new building, entrusted to the Piedmontese engineer Captain Cochis.
The project involved the demolition of the choir and sacristy, the construction, in E shape, of a large domed transept, of the presbytery communicating with a new sacristy and the stylistic adaptation of the rest of the building.
Work began only in 1809, perhaps on the project updated by the master builder Raffaele Cappai and the architect Gerolamo Melis, who then tested the work; it was, in practice, a reconstruction divided into two phases - the first entrusted to the entrepreneur Randaccio, the second to the master builder Crobu - and concluded in 1828. The bell tower was partly rebuilt and modified in 1868, while the reconstruction of the clock tower ended in 1900.
The façade, neoclassical, is concluded by a triangular tympanum, and divided in two orders by a marcapian frame: in the lower part, the rectangular main entrance is surmounted by classical teeth; in the upper part, a window inside a bezel. It is framed by the bell tower and the clock tower, which incorporate the ancient buttresses diagonally.
The interior, in the shape of a Latin cross, consists of a single-aisle room with a barrel vault underneath rounded arches that mark the three bays; large arches lead into the six chapels. The last chapel in S. connects, through an impressive arched pointed arch, with the only remaining room of the Gothic church, with a star vault, now used as the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.
Above the cross, an octagonal dome with window, concluded by a lantern and enclosing an equally octagonal drum. The large presbytery is raised by two steps; the right arm of the transept leads to the sacristy covered in a pavilion.

History of studies
The church, studied by Ida Farci, is the subject of a summary fact sheet in Salvatore Naitza's volume on late-seventeenth-century and purist architecture (1992).

Bibliography
I. Farci, Quartu Sant'Elena. Religious art from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, Cagliari, Stef, 1988;
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, page 58;
I. Farci, The Parish Church of Sant'Elena in Quartu. Art and history from the 12th to the 20th century, Cagliari, Ettore Gasperini, 2001;
I. Farci, “Parish Church of Sant'Elena”, in The jewels of religious architecture. History, restorations and furnishings from Romanesque to classical style, curated by N. Rossi-S. Meloni, Dolianova, Graphic by Parteolla, 2005.