Religious, Spiritual sights in Cagliari
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Chiesa di Sant'Efisio
Despite its unassuming façade and modest interior, the most important church in the Stampace quarter is the Chiesa di Sant'Efisio. It's dedicated to Cagliari's patron saint, St Ephisius, a Roman soldier who converted to Christianity and later lost his head for refusing to recant his new-found faith. The church is supposedly built on the site of the martyr's prison.
He's stood the city in good stead throughout the years, saving the populus from a hideous plague in 1652 - when the church got its marble makeover - and repelling Napoleon's fleet in 1793. You can even see French cannonballs embedded in the wall beneath a picture of St Ephisius stirring up the storm that sent …
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Chiesa di Santo Sepolcro
Visit the Chiesa di Santo Sepolcro, whose most astonishing feature is an enormous 17th-century gilded wooden altarpiece housing a figure of the Virgin Mary.
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Cripta di Santa Restituta
Virtually next door to the Chiesa di Sant'Efisio is the Cripta di Santa Restituta, which has been in use since pre-Christian times. It's a huge, eerie natural cavern where the echo of leaking water drip-drips. Originally a place of pagan worship, it became the home of the martyr Restituta in the 5th century and a reference point for Cagliari's early Christians. The Orthodox Christians took it over - you can still see remnants of their frescoes - until the 13th century, when it was abandoned.
In WWII it was used as an air-raid shelter, a task it was not up to, since many died while holed up here during a raid in February 1943. It's interesting to make out the wartime graff…
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Chiesa di San Michele
Stampace, the city’s medieval working-class district, harbours several impressive churches including the 16th-century Chiesa di San Michele, celebrated for its lavish 18th-century rococo decor. Outside in the atrium, note the four-columned pulpit from which the Spanish emperor Carlos V is said to have delivered a stirring speech before setting off on a fruitless campaign against Arab corsairs in Tunisia.
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Chiesa di Sant'Anna
Stampace's Chiesa di Sant'Anna is the largest but least interesting of the lot. It looms out at you as if from nowhere and its imposing sand-coloured façade rises high above the little square it dominates. Largely destroyed in WWII and painstakingly rebuilt afterwards, it is basically baroque, but the Ionic columns melded into the undulating façade give it a slightly severe neoclassical edge.
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Chiostro di San Domenico
To the east of Il Castello lies the 'new town' of Villanova, initially an artisans' quarter that spilt out of the original city. You can wander the tight web of lanes that began the expansion; they're squashed between the eastern side of the castle and the Gothic complex of Chiostro di San Domenico. Strangely, amid the modern urban sprawl, hide some of Cagliari's oldest and most famous churches.
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Cattedrale di Santa Maria
Apart from the square-based bell tower, little remains of the original 13th-century Gothic structure – the interior is 17th-century baroque and the Pisan-Romanesque facade is a 20th-century imitation – but it’s still an impressive sight. Inside are two intricate stone pulpits on either side of the central entrance, sculpted by Guglielmo da Pisa and donated to the city in 1312.
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Chiesa di San Lucifero
Directly across the leafy modern Piazza San Cosimo is the baroque Chiesa di San Lucifero. Below the church is a 6th-century crypt where the tomb of the early Archbishop of Cagliari, St Lucifer, rests. In earlier times the area had been part of a Roman burial ground.
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