This church stands lower than the street. It has not sunk: it is the village that has risen around it over the centuries, and to reach the doorway they had to build stone steps. Those steps, running round the door, have become a seat, and the seat is at the main crossroads of Barumini.
What to see
The forms are the Catalan-Aragonese ones that reached Sardinia with the Spanish rule, mixed with late gothic; it is likely that an older church lies underneath, built in the same style. A bequest of 1704, that of a commissioner of the Holy Office, paid for the repairs: a new slate floor, a bell with the Ave Maria, the wooden roof remade and then the sacristy.
For almost a century this church was the village cemetery. At the end of the eighteenth century ten burial niches were ordered and that use lasted until 1885, when the municipal graveyard was built. The sources also record what it once held: thirteen paintings, an old retablo, the silverware and a seventeenth-century tabernacle that came from another church.
Visiting
The church is on the main avenue of Barumini, right in the centre; it is subsidiary to the parish church, so it opens for services and on particular occasions. A quarter of an hour.
Our editors' tip
Sit down on the step around the doorway. It is where the people of Barumini have sat for generations, and it came about by accident, as a join between two different levels. Designed benches stay empty, the ones born from a problem of height are always taken: here is the proof, in stone.