The church, located on the slopes of Mount Urpinu, was built at the behest of Baron Giovanni Sanjust of Teulada between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on the ruins of an ancient Byzantine church. The primitive church was smaller than the present one because it was enlarged by knocking down the wall of a room in front of the hall, marked by a fold on the wall. The small church consists of a hall covered by a wooden structure on trusses resting on stone corbels, which is flanked by the presbytery, on a square plan raised one step above the hall and separated from it by a pointed arch. The presbytery is detached from the hall on the side facing Garavetti Street by a projecting buttress reminiscent of the ancient diaphragm arches of early Catalan churches. This (the presbytery) is covered by an octagonal dome clad in earthenware that evokes distant Byzantine echoes and rests on cylindrical pendentives. In the first section of the hall, on the entrance side, there is a high choir made of wooden structure resting on stone corbels, similar to those of the roof, and lit by a window balcony with wrought-iron parapet facing the main front. The chancel was built as part of a restoration project (1968) as were both the chancel windows and the capitals and moldings of the chancel arch, which were reinterpreted on late 19th-century Art Nouveau lines. Simple elevations and essential lines denote the interior volume marked by the church’s Sardinian tile roofing. During World War II, the building suffered severe damage from bombing, and later restoration tampered with its primary structure. After a restoration supervised by the Department of Public Works, Municipality of Cagliari, the church is now returned to the city.
