This sixteenth-century church in Barumini has something village churches rarely have: a loggia wrapping round two of its sides, with columns on square bases and pointed arches. It served as shelter and as meeting place, because a saint's feast was held outside at least as much as in.
What to see
The plan is simple and rectangular, with two doors and a single chapel. You climb to the presbytery by four stone steps cut as half hexagons, the floor is terracotta and the pulpit is all of wood. Light comes in through a single circular oculus, so the interior is dark and changes a great deal with the hour.
In the side walls open three ossuaries a side: people were buried in here, as in almost every European church before the nineteenth century. In the middle of the eighteenth century the closure of the attached cemetery was ordered, but in 1817 four graves were reopened, a sign that rule and necessity did not agree.
Visiting
The church is in the centre of Barumini, a few minutes from the parish church and the archaeological site; it is a subsidiary church, so it opens mainly for services and for the saint's feast. A quarter of an hour.
Our editors' tip
From under the loggia raise your eyes to the bell-gable: there are two bells, and on one the date of casting is written half in Roman numerals and half in Arabic figures. In a church rebuilt several times the bells are often the most reliable document: a building is remade, a bell carries on it the year it was poured.