Carloforte, Church of the New Innocents

According to tradition, the island of Saint Peter owes its name to the passage of the apostle, when, during a trip from Africa to Rome with a stop in Cagliari, a storm forced him to land on the island.
This tradition is mentioned by Bonfant in his “Triumph of the Saints in Sardinia” and by Abbot Martino Carrillo, Visitor General of the King of Spain, who in his report to Philip III (king of Spain, Naples, Sicily and Portugal between 1598 and 1621) reports that although the island was uninhabited, a church had been built there in memory of the Holy Apostle and that the inhabitants of Cagliari and Sulci (now Sant'Antioco) celebrated the feast on 29 June passing in front of the island in a procession of boats. The church stands at the top of the Fontane hill, in a spectacular landscape, in the green of a pine forest enriched by rare examples of Aleppo pine.
The current late Baroque structure stands on the ruins of a thirteenth-century church dedicated to the New Innocents, in memory of a shipwreck in which a part of those children perished who, around 1212, in the confused movement to prepare for the Fifth Crusade, ventured into the semi-legendary “Children's Crusade”. Two of the seven vessels that left Marseilles were swallowed by the stormy sea, off the S/O coast of Sardinia, near the island of Saint Peter, where Pope Gregory IX ordered that a church be erected in their memory. The boys placed in the other vessels, which arrived in Syria, were sold as slaves.
The church, however uncertain its initial dedication may be, must have existed on the island since medieval times. It was the only religious reference for the initial group of Ligurians from Tabarca who, in 1736, had been granted land concession by Carlo Emanuele III, considered the founding king.
The reconstruction of the small church is probably due to the Piedmontese military engineer Augusto della Vallea. A document from the Cagliari State Archives states that in 1738 Della Vallea was working on the new urban structure and that he “also built the church.” It certainly cannot be the parish church dedicated to Saint Charles, in which a scheme was adopted for the façade as adhering to the classicistic model and far from the personal style of Della Vallea, permeated by late-Baroque culture.
The Church of the New Innocents shows in its exemplary simplicity an obvious Piedmontese character. From the high white walls of the street stands out the façade of the church pierced by a reniform window, framed within two strong pilasters that vertically cross the modest but harmonious façade. The pilasters intersect with a well-shaped frame and with a protruding frame placed at the top like a ceiling. The façade is crowned by an attic with a triangular tympanum and pinnacles in the style of Juvarra, this party, on which Della Vallea insists, for example, on the drawings of the funeral home equipment created on the occasion of the death of the viceroy Girolamo Falletti of Castagnola and Barolo, who died in Cagliari on July 5, 1735. The interior is well proportioned and has a remarkable low vault that covers the single classroom.

Bibliography
G. Vallebona, Carloforte. History of a colonization (1738-1810), Carloforte, 1962;
M. Cabras, “The works of De Vincenti and the first Piedmontese military engineers in Sardinia in the period 1720-17452", in Proceedings of the XIII Congress on the History of Architecture. Sardinia, Rome, 1966; Monographic study on the city of Carloforte, Cagliari, 1974;
V. Mossa, From Gothic to Baroque in Sardinia, Sassari, 1982;
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism, series “History of art in Sardinia”, Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, pp. 91-92; V. Mossa, Events of Architecture in Sardinia, Sassari, 1994.