The rural church of St. Basil, about 3 km from the village, stands near the Matta stream in an area subjected to forestry work since 1967, which has given the area a cozy and charming atmosphere. The earliest record of the building is attested in a document kept in the Archives of the Crown of Aragon, (Taxationis benefficiorum Regni Sardinie), an undated document, however traceable to the mid-14th century. It is also recorded in the Cagliari Ecclesiastical Annuities of 1365. The church, which had fallen into disrepair, was later rebuilt in the 17th century, as we are informed by a notarial deed dated March 24, 1642, which disposes of the agreement made between the picapedrer Paolo de Andriola, a resident of the appendix of Lapola in Cagliari, and Giovanni Augusto Vacca of Decimoputzu to rebuild the old church of the glorios Sant Basili In the locality of Arriu de Matta. The contract called for the construction of the walls equal to those of the church of St. Peter in Decimoputzu by increasing the height and width by three palms; two square stone portals, one large in front, the other in the side; and the bell tower, like that of the said church of St. Peter, to house a bell. The altar was to conform to that of the church of St. John of Siliqua. Several restoration works are documented during the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the most important intervention is dated 1790; the act provided for That the aforesaid church of St. Basil’s be repaired in a workmanlike manner, on the inward and outward sides, all the stores that exist around it and its loggias joined to the same church are found and the piece of the wall that begins from these stores, and extends to the great porch from it, which is toward noon. At that date we know with certainty that there was already the large portico, connected to the church with around it a series of stores and loggias connected by a curtain wall that reconnected to the same portico. The situation described is the same as that found in 1967. Demolitions and interventions from 1984 until the present day have given the current configuration. The church has an Antonian cross or tau plan layout. It is basically two intersecting rectangular compartments, of which the longitudinal one along the east-west axis constitutes the nave, the transverse one, north-south, the transept. The two rooms are connected by a large round arch, frontal to the entrance. The nave is accessed through three openings, two simple, rectangular side openings in the south and north sides, and the one on the west façade, characterized by a segmental arch. Above the portal in the center of the facade is an oculus, originally the only window in the entire building. The pitched roof is of wooden trusses and Sardinian tiles. Attached to the gabled facade is a square portico of almost similar proportions to the worship space, which symmetrically embraces the transept line. The articulated two-sloped wooden roof is supported by eight tufa block pillars, four central and four lateral, and the large archway to the porch. Over this arch rises a small bell gable with no bell. To the south elevation, along the nave of abuts a small porch and to the north side of the transept abuts two paraliturgical rooms, namely, a storeroom and the sacristy, on which the room called de “su prasoneddu” is set upstairs. A stone baptismal font with hexagonal bowl and carved faces depicting various symbols of the sacraments is preserved inside the building. In one a shield is the date 1603. The altarpiece on the back wall is what remains of an articulated wooden retable. The canvas depicts St. Basil and Our Lady according to an established iconography that often sees them together.
