Villa San Pietro, Church of San Pietro

The building is currently incorporated into the town of Villa San Pietro, located in the Pula valley, a short distance from the sea.
The church of San Pietro in Villa San Pietro is a minor, but no less significant, episode of the Romanesque building story in Sardinia.
There are no contemporary documents at the time of construction, which can be placed at the end of the 13th century. The church shows a phenomenon peculiar to the architecture of that century, which in Sardinia marks the integration into Romanesque construction practice of elements derived from the decorative baggage of the Gothic style. This is a moment of passage that exemplifies the ways in which stylistic currents change in art: not sudden and clear changes, but initial overlaps towards the predominance of one style over another.
The thirteenth-century church, made of limestone in warm tones, has a single-aisle plan concluded by a perfectly oriented apse covered by a wooden roof. The interior space is divided into bays with round diaphragm arches. The small size is associated with a certain linear simplicity of the external walls.
The façade is divided by means of pilasters into three mirrors, which end with pointed hanging arches set on peducci with geometric, plant or simple molding ornaments. At different points on the façade, culminating in a sailing bell tower, there are hemispherical cavities intended to house ceramic basins that have now been lost. In the side elevations, the same division into mirrors as just observed is repeated, and the same theory of arches, which, however, are semicircular.
The N side stands out for the presence of the portal that follows the pattern of the façade. In this case, the gray stone lintel with an interesting ornament should be noted: a cross and a very schematic human figure are arranged in the decorative field, made of very crushed relief. In the apsidal façade, the arches, which follow the protrusions of the roof, are again pointed and lobed at the top. Along the semicircle at the base of the cover of the apsidal basin, this ornamental system is preserved only in part and limited to peducci, since a large number of round arches have been lost.

History of studies
In the 20th century, the church was the subject of research, involving Dionigi Scano, Raffaello Delogu, Anna Saiu Deidda, Renata Serra and Roberto Coroneo in in-depth studies that clarify its historical and artistic aspects.

Bibliography
D. Scano, History of Art in Sardinia from the 11th to the 14th Century, Cagliari-Sassari, Montorsi, 1907, pp. 328-329;
R. Delogu, The Architecture of the Middle Ages in Sardinia, Rome, The State Library, 1953, pp. 189-190;
A. Saiu Deidda, “Decorative sculpture in the Romanesque architecture of southwestern Sardinia”, in Annals of the Faculty of Teaching of Cagliari, V, 1981, part II, pp. 19-21; R. Serra, La Sardegna, “Romanesque Italy” series, Milan, Jaca, 1989,
pp. 360-361;
R. Coroneo, Romanesque architecture from the middle of the thousand to the early thirteenth century, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1993, page 126; R. Coroneo, Romanesque churches of Sardinia. Cultural tourist itineraries, Cagliari, AV, 2005, p. 99.

How to get there
Take the SS 195 up to km 24 to reach the urban center of Villa San Pietro. In St. Peter's Square, next to the one built recently, stands the ancient parish church dedicated to the apostle who gave the town its name.