Our Lady of the Rosary Church

The Church of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary stands about halfway down Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the main artery of the historic core of the 19th-century city, but already the prestigious site of aristocratic palaces and Jesuit properties, to which would be added, almost adjacent to the church, the imposing college of the Order, transformed into a seminary under the rule of Bishop Giovanni Antonio Cossu (1785-1796).
The date of its founding is unknown, but the present building, extensively remodeled in the 19th century, probably stands on the site of an older church.
The façade is divided into two orders: in the lower, enclosed by narrow pilasters and raised on slightly projecting wainscoting, opens the ribbed portal, with rich display in Mannerist forms of cultured inspiration but declined according to the vernacular and chromatic-planar version proposed several times by local workers. It is perhaps the only relict of the older factory: the pilasters, barely decorated with lath frames and rosette motifs, are finished by cornice capitals and surmounted by an architrave moved by the modular diamond-tipped motif, to which is added a semicircular tympanum interrupted in the center by the low-relief image of the Virgin and Child.
The second order of the facade appears to be strongly influenced by the Baroque forms of the Carmine church: two flat pilasters with Ionic capitals divide it into three mirrors; in the middle one fits a ribbed window surmounted by the bulky public clock placed there in 1875. The crowning is played, as at Carmel, on concave and convex lines, terminated by curling volutes and flame-holding vases.
The interior, with cross-ribbed roofs and sub-arches punctuating the bays, shows nothing remarkable; the side altars in painted stucco are dedicated to St. Dominic, the Virgin of Health, St. Nicholas and St. Anthony of Padua.

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