In the mountains of Capoterra, a few kilometers from the town, stands the small church of Santa Barbara Vergine e Martire Cagliaritana. In its present conformation, a small single-nave hall with a Romanesque-style wooden roof, erected in 1280 at the expense of the archbishop of Cagliari Gallo, was grafted on its northern side in 1739 with a large chapel with a quadrangular base covered by a hemispherical dome, to enlarge its liturgical spaces and make them more suitable to accommodate the Saint’s devotees, who were growing in number after her relics were rediscovered in Cagliari on June 23, 1621.
First belonging to the Hermits of St. Augustine, the church then passed to the Basilian monks, the Conventual Franciscans and finally, in 1861, to the parish of Capoterra.
The perfectly oriented Romanesque structure, with its surfaces broken up by pairs of pilasters, is characterized by exuberant ornamentation with hanging arches, simple or lobed, on corbels with geometric, phytomorphic or figured decorations, but above all by the presence of numerous nests for ceramic basins in the Pisan fashion, more than seventy, of which only four are still preserved.
A short distance from the church, a little further upstream, is the spring “Sa Scabitzada,” which, according to legend, began to gush forth at the moment when the head of St. Barbara, severed by the executioner’s sword blow, fell to the ground. Protected by a small chapel built between the 14th and 17th centuries, it is still a pilgrimage destination.
