Sassari, Cathedral of Saint Nicholas

The cathedral, inside, houses the Diocesan Museum.
The continuous renovations and modernization that have taken place over the centuries on the cathedral of San Nicola have not benefited the structural and stylistic coherence of the building but have made it, in any case, a valuable example of an architectural schedule in which there is no shortage of original solutions.
It is an ancient monastic record, the “Condaghe di S. Pietro di Silki”, that provides us with the first documentary reference. In fact, in an act of 1135, the church “Sancti Nicolai de Tathari” is spoken of. Nothing has come down to us from these ancient structures, dating back to the 12th century. The four surviving orders of the bell tower belong to the 13th century, which, in 1756, was raised with an octagonal body concluded by a small dome.
Between 1480 and 1505 - the year the main altar was consecrated - the cathedral, following the transfer of the bishop's seat from Torres to Sassari (1441) and the demographic expansion of the city, was rebuilt and expanded according to the canons of Gothic architecture in the Catalan and Valencian areas; with a single aisle with side chapels and a square apse. At the junction with the transept, it was covered by a hemispherical dome.
Extensive renovations - including that of 1681 entrusted to Balthasar Romero - were started during the seventeenth century until the first decades of the following century: in the transept and in the side chapels, ribbed vaults were replaced with barrel vaults, the semicircular apse was opened, the flanks were reinforced and, above all, intervention was carried out on the Gothic façade which, due to significant structural problems, was knocked down along with the span closest to it. To counter the thrusts of the vaults, a complex organism with three arches covered by stellar vaults was erected, surmounted by a second order and a curvilinear nuisance.
The façade is divided into three orders: the first consists of a porch with three arches; this room, covered by ribbed and gemmed cross vaults in the Catalan style, overlooks the entrance portal to the church, opened in the actual façade. The second order is, from a figurative point of view, the most significant. On the three wall mirrors there are three niches that are different in shape but all browned, inside which are the statues of the Holy Turritan martyrs Gavino, Proto and Gianuario. The last order consists of the large pediment enclosed by a large, shaped and embroidered frame that follows its direction in Lucerne. The only niche here houses the simulacrum of Saint Nicholas of Bari, patron saint of Sassari. At the height of the nuisance, like a menagil and almost as a seal of the new façade, is the figure of the Eternal Father.
In 1690, the new high altar was erected and during the 18th and 19th centuries, numerous other plastic and pictorial furnishings were added.

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
V. Mossa, From Gothic to Baroque in Sardinia, Sassari, 1982;
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 7;
R. Coroneo, Romanesque architecture from the mid-thousand to the early 1300s. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1993, sheet 111;
F. Segni Pulvirenti - A. Sari, Late Gothic and Renaissance Architecture. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1994, sheet 26.