It stands where there was once a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin of Relief, granted to the Order in 1606, when the Carmelites abandoned the convent of St. Anthony Abbot, which was unhealthy because of its proximity to the Temo River.
The new site, close to the town gate of San Giovanni and to one of the roads that connected the town with the north of the island, housed the friars until the second half of the 19th century, when the Savoy laws on the suppression of monastic orders and the forfeiture of their property led to the gradual abandonment of Bosa by the Carmelites.
Around 1770 the initiative had been taken to demolish the old Church of Relief, which was in a precarious condition and was insufficient for the activities of the religious and the population. The present building was then constructed, named after the Order’s patron saint, completed with a new ”retablo” facade in 1779 and officially consecrated by Bishop Murro in 1810.
The laws of 1866-67 assigned the church to the Worship Fund and the adjacent convent to the municipality, which established elementary schools and the Gymnasium there. In 1872 the building came back into the possession of the ecclesiastical authority, which accepted the exchange with the Magdalene Church, demolished by City Hall to allow urban development of the city to the west.
The rich elevation – composed according to a planar design of Sardinian character however referable to the Piedmontese baroque – breaks the simplicity of the outer walls of the convent, which also form a homogeneous continuation of it on the northern slope, where the terminal cornice on corbels is extended.
The facade of the church is set in three descending orders, marked by pilasters with capitals. The lower area is parceled into five mirrors, in the center of which fits the ribbed portal surmounted by a rich pediment at the center of which is the Order’s coat of arms. Above a thick cornice set the two upper orders, which continue the vertical lines but reduce the mirrors to three, with a large window and niche on axis with the portal and crowning concave and convex lines terminated by volutes and flame-holding vases.
The interior has a single nave with a barrel roof and four side chapels on each side. The raised chancel is surmounted by a hemispherical dome on pendentives and is enriched on the back wall by a monumental and pompous marble and stucco altar dated 1791.
