Three churches overlooked Piazza del Popolo, a unique case in Sardinia: the parish church, dedicated to St. Sebastian, the church of Our Lady of the Rosary, and the church of Santa Croce, now deconsecrated and converted into a cinema theater.
Around the second half of the 17th century, the Berchiddese abandoned the cult of St. Sixtus (until then patron saint of the town), whose church, which stood on the slopes of Mount Ruinas, was dismantled and the stones recovered to make the church of St. Sebastian and the little church of the Rosary. The cult of St. Sixtus was thus replaced with that of St. Sebastian, protector of the people against the plague epidemics, precisely on the occasion of the end of the devastating plague epidemic of 1652, which, in addition to decimating the population, had caused the village to move from the area around Mount Ruinas to the present one. A legend, passed down orally, says that the new church was built on the exact spot where the oxen carrying the statue of the saint stopped. The church was slightly longer, wider and taller than the adjacent little church of the Rosary and was accessed through two entrances; inside, there were several chapels on either side. The old church was demolished in 1976 and rebuilt in a modern style: it is a spacious building with large historiated stained-glass windows and preserves inside numerous works by local artists and an important artistic and historical monument, the Wooden Altar
of the 1700s, only recently returned to the parish. It is a polychrome wooden altar, apparently commissioned by a wealthy local family and made, probably in the first half of the 1700s, by an expert craftsman from Sassari whose name is unknown. Over the years, it has undergone several phases of restoration, both of structural consolidation and of an aesthetic nature. In the three niches are placed, on the left, the statue of St. Sebastian, on the right, the statue of St. Lucy, and in the center, the Risen Christ. The painting surmounting the altar depicts the Eternal Father; in the central parament is the Cross of the Order of Malta.
Next to the parish church is the Chiesetta del Rosario, a building with beautiful 17th-century lines that underwent restoration work a few years ago.
Inside, some of the best-preserved statues from the old chapels are kept; these include the triptych formed by Our Lady of the Rosary, St. Dominic and St. Catherine, and the precious statue of St. Mark.
Also kept there are the bells of the old church and the articulated Crucifix, used in the rites of Holy Week, carried in procession and laid at the end in the little church.
