Villamassargia, Church of Santa Maria della Neve

Villamassargia is an agro-pastoral center lying radially between the provincial road (foothills) and the slopes of the sandy-marshy mountain of Monte Exi (369 m). There are few ruins left of the walls, once important since Villamassargia, with Domusnovae and the equipped town of Iglesias, completed the defensive system erected by the Pisans to protect the valley and the mining area. It preserves evidence of its historical importance, especially in the religious buildings built in the XIII-XIV century during the lordship of Donoratico della Gherardesca.
In the parish church of Santa Maria della Neve, three construction phases are recognizable: the original layout (first decades of the 13th century) can be traced back to the hall with three naves and the squat pillars of Cistercian origin; a subsequent renovation of a few decades dates back to the elevation of the central nave with shelves (two bearing Romanesque sculptures) to support the wooden roof; in a third construction phase (16th-17th century), the interior space was modified, expanding it, in Gothic-Catalan forms recognizable in the main chapel and in the main Eight side chapels, four on each side, barrel-vaulted. The façade was also transformed, which, although devoid of oblique lateral buttresses, still follows the Gothic-Catalan tradition of the façade with a horizontal crowning adorned with serrated blackbirds, an architectural pattern present especially in the South of the island.
The façade differs from the Gothic tradition due to the wise use of a square module that gives the façade Renaissance proportions. In the smooth wall surface, barely vibrated by a subtle pictoricism based on the sober differentiation of the tones of the trachitic stone, there are elements of polylobed arches, characteristic of the flowery Gothic, which, in all probability, constituted the architectural decoration of the oldest façade.
The rounded portal, framed by two smooth half-columns, is dominated by a curvilinear tympanum broken by the insertion at the back of a rectangular window that cuts even the rose window above in half.

History of studies
The church has been examined mainly for the scant residues of the planting phase in the late Romanesque age.

Bibliography
R. Coroneo, Romanesque architecture from the middle of the thousand to the early '300, series “History of art in Sardinia”, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1993, pp. 250-275.

How to get there
From SS 130 (Cagliari-Iglesias), take the exit for Domusnovas-Villamassargia-Carbonia and follow the straight line that connects Domusnovas-Villamassargia towards S, for about 4 km. The church is at the entrance of the town, of which it is the parish church.