Tempio Pausania, Church of San Pietro

Impressive and austere, entirely made of well-shaped granite ashlars, the complex formed by the cathedral of Saint Peter, the bell tower and the oratory of Santa Croce, imposes itself on the sober civil architecture that surrounds it on every side.
The Church of San Pietro Apostolo is the cathedral of the diocese of Tempio-Ampurias. The current appearance is due to the reconstruction of 1832-39, when the pre-existing church was extended by a span, advancing the façade, already remodeled in the 16th century. The church presents baroque manners. It has a single aisle with four chapels on each side. The very simple façade, just moved by the trumpeted portal and the two curved windows at the top, is relieved of its function by the much more articulated side of the wall with the gable openings, the oculi adorned with mosaics and the partitioning of the surface by means of strongly detected double pilasters.
The interior, with a single aisle covered by a nail barrel vault, has four chapels on each side. Those close to the presbytery are deeper, almost as if to form a transept on which the large elevated and apsidal presbyterial area is grafted. In the room there are several works commissioned by Archbishop Capece at the beginning of the nineteenth century, all in the Genoese Baroque style: marble altar, pulpit, baptistery, various marble statues. The pipe organ was made in 1980 by Paolo Ciresa, a South Tyrolean artist; it consists of 25 registers and 1726 pipes.
The oratory of Santa Croce, in E, has a sober façade marked on the two levels by pilasters and concluded by a triangular tympanum connected to the lower body by two inflected wings. Once a nailed barrel reinforced by round arches, it covers the only aisle.

History of studies
A review of studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the fact sheet in the volume of the “History of Art in Sardinia” on nineteenth-century architecture (1992).

Bibliography of
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 63.