“Sa Cresia Manna” is a building of great architectural interest that has undergone various interventions over time that have changed its appearance and whose origins can be traced back to the Byzantine period. The Church of St. Barbara was built next to the pre-existing Church of St. Anthony Abbot. We do not know whether the ancient Byzantine church was revised in the Romanesque period, but certainly in the Gothic period. In 1388 it was ordered that at the court’s expense the entrance portal to the church be rebuilt and that the church be equipped with a bell, in which it is possible to read “ALFHA:ET:O:AN(N)O: D(OMI)NI: MCCCLXXXVIII.” The church was enlarged in the 1500s with late Gothic architectural and building modes and in the 1700s marble frontals were added. Today the nave has three chapels on each side; the six chapels differ from each other in shape and size: five are barrel-vaulted, one cross-vaulted and ribbed. The transept, chancel, and apse differ in their 19th-century school style from everything else. The statues are valuable, especially that of St. Barbara from around 1500, placed on the high altar from 1724, made of polychrome marble as well as the pulpit. Of interest are the sacred furnishings and a valuable 1835 painting of the Madonna and Child with Begging Souls, by the Gonnese painter known as “Marracciu.” The church had a forecourt surrounded by a high wall closed by a portal with a large arch, which was eliminated in the early 1900s. The façade now has curved lines and angular pilasters, whereas until 1971 it had the flat terminal of Catalan Gothic with two side battlements and the ruins of the small church of St. Anthony, which has become the Cemetery charnel house.
