The small church of Santa Maria del Monte di Pietà, home of the Confraternity of the same name established by papal bull in 1530 and confirmed in 1551, composed of noble people whose main task was to offer assistance and give burial to those condemned to death, was built beginning in 1568. Architecturally, two construction phases can be distinguished: one, the front, definitely Gothic, the other already Renaissance. The plain-walled elevation has a section of framed arch at the top that is conglobated in the wall apparatus and interrupted by a semicircular arched window. The building has a single nave without a transept, with the chancel developed as a real chapel with a square and narrower plan, unlike the two bays of the nave which are rectangular in shape. Different systems are also noticeable in the upper roofs: in the chancel the vault is star vaulting with ogives and five pendulous gems; in the bays of the nave there are simple diagonal ribbed vaults. It can be traced, in the context of Sardinian churches, to the typology of the parish church of Padria and in Cagliari to the neighboring churches of Purissima and Sant’Eulalia. After the Confraternity was suppressed in 1866, the church had various uses: second seat of the Court of Assizes, municipal music school until 1921, dormitory and refectory of the small Providence House.
