Villacidro, Church of Santa Barbara

The village enjoys an ideal eastern exposure and stretches gently among lush olive groves and orchards at the foot of the Linas Massif. It is surrounded by mountains rich in streams and woods that are home to numerous species of wild animals, such as the Sardinian deer, the mouflon and the eagle.
The urban plan, conditioned by the location - unique in Sardinia - on the edge of a conoid, has been developed in two nuclei: one further downstream, built on gently sloping land, has a wide road network and a modest quality building fabric; the upstream nucleus, more characteristic, is formed by compact lots of mostly stone houses, which branch out radially from the square of the parish church dedicated to Santa Barbara.
The parish church of Villacidro represents a valuable example of imitation of artistic forms imported from the largest European cultural environment.
The cultured element is highlighted above all in the choice of the counter-reform structure of the single room with three chapels on each side, in the barrel roofs, in the use of evolved and carefully proportionate orders and in the choice of decorative themes of the classical tradition, such as the Ionian capital and the smooth pilaster.
Originally built in the 16th century Gothic-Catalan building, the church retains the bell tower and the star-vaulted “capilla mayor”, elements that were not affected by the renovation project commissioned in 1670 by Monsignor Pietro Vico. The work was entrusted to the Genoese master builder Domenico Spotorno, who, in those years, was also renovating the cathedral of Cagliari in baroque form. This circumstance would suggest that he was not an architect called, exceptionally, for the Cagliari cathedral but an expert contractor for works that required works such as the domes with their plumes, turned round, entablatations carried out on the current basis of classical orders that perhaps were not so familiar to the even good insiders living on the island.
Judging from the current situation, the parish church of Villacidro responds to the Cagliari model in the arrangement of space, divided on three different surfaces, where the side parts, span after span, have domes comparable, although without lights, to those of the cathedral of Cagliari.
The façade consists of a flat surface concluded by a “carabiniere's hat” crowning. The only decorative elements are the central portal with a broken semicircular tympanum and emblem inserted into the interruption of the tympanum and a rectangular opening above. To the right of the façade is the bell tower consisting of three square-shaped orders crowned by a balustrade and surmounted by an octagonal order concluded by an octagonal dome covered in majolica. The construction of the bell tower began in 1639 by Mastro Paolo Andriola on the initiative of Archbishop Manchin of Cagliari and was completed in 1659 by Mastro Antonio Dore.
During the 18th century, the parish church was enriched with the most prestigious furnishings, including the main altar, a refined work by Giovanni Battista Spazzi, belonging to the marble families who came to Sardinia from the Val d'Intelvi in the second half of the 18th century.

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
F. Cherchi Paba, Villacidro and Guspini, series “Historical and Tourist Notebooks of Sardinia”, Cagliari, 1969;
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 5;
Villacidro, between architecture and sacred furnishings. Guide catalog of the Santa Barbara museum, edited by A. Piras, Villacidro, 2000.

How to get there
On the SS 293 at km 22.4, the route that crosses the Rio Leni comes off and allows you to climb (5.1 km) to the town of Villacidro.