San Vero Milis, Church of Saint Sophia

The parish church of Santa Sofia is located where the town stops along the natural barrier of the S'Arrieddu watercourse, towards E, in one of the lowest and wettest points in the area.
The current building is the result of a complete reconstruction in Renaissance forms started in the last twenty years of the 16th century and completed in 1604 by the Genoese Agostino Carchi and Francesco Escano from Cagliari, as reported in the epigraph placed on the right jamb of the triumphal arch.
Although it presents the usual Sardinian-Catalan ichnography with a chancel smaller than the naves, it shows in the beautiful proportions of the room, which expands into the large and bright side chapels, a concept of space and light with a now classicistic flavor and thus stands out as one of the earliest manifestations of the new style in the provincial context.
The only aisle has turned in a barrel and is divided into three large bays from round grooves that rest on Tuscan pillows. It overlooks three chapels on each side, covered with lunetted pavilion vaults and characterized by an unusual depth that, with the wide connecting arches, also round in shape, suggests the sense of the spaciality and brightness of a building with three naves.
The façade, later, is characterized by the local eclectic trend that consists of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque elements reinterpreted in a vernacular key with clear graphic-planar intentions. In fact, it links the Gothic rose window, now devoid of a wheel, eyebrow and adorned with a spiral molding with the Renaissance timpaned portals in which all the decorative elements are concentrated. The central one has twisted and grooved semicolumns side by side, a girl-shaped frieze and a theory of stylized palm trees that have deteriorated due to the erosive action of atmospheric agents. In the middle of the lintel, the date of the prospectus is carved, interpretable as 1638 or 1648. The side portals are simpler and smaller in size: the only decorative element is an angelic head at the midpoint of the entablature. The stone wall is made of tuff, sandstone and vulcanite and has a more accurate size at the bottom.
Work on the construction of the bell tower began in 1752 and lasted for about half a century. The barrel, with a square plan, is made of well-squared blocks of Sinis sandstone and reaches a total height of about 40 meters. Performed without conditioning by pre-existing elements, it is probably the work of one of the many Savoy military engineers on the island at that time. Impressive and massive, it has a now classicist setting: unique elements of the Baroque tradition can be identified in the decorations in red volcanic stone and in the “onion” dome.

History of studies
The church is the subject of brief sheets in the volumes of the series “History of Art in Sardinia” on Romanesque (1993), late Gothic and Renaissance (1994), late seventeenth-century and purist (1992) architecture.

Bibliography of
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 26;
R. Coroneo, Romanesque architecture from the mid-thousand to the early thirteenth century, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1993, sheet 99;
F. Segni Pulvirenti - A. Sari, Late Gothic and Renaissance architecture. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1994, sheet 65.