Built beginning in 1670, thanks to the bequests and donations of Philip IV King of Spain and noblemen from Sassari, including N.H. Giovanni Tola, the complex was completed by 1695 and has been home to the Capuchin Nuns ever since. Through the portal of the simple facade with a double-sloped front, in which the benefactor’s noble coat of arms stands out, one enters the ante-portico and, from there, the interior of the church. A single nave, covered with a lunetted barrel vault, encloses a rare late Baroque interior rich in sacred works and furnishings that the low soft light envelops in an atmosphere charged with intense mysticism. The gaze focuses on the classical polychrome wooden altar made in the very early 18th century by local workshop hosting wooden statues depicting the Virgin Mary with St. Francis with St. Clare and the Holy Family on either side. Two shallow chapels overlook the hall, one dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua, furnished with a Baroque altar named after the saint, while the chapel of the Holy Cross, on the opposite side, houses a remarkably crafted wooden altar with an aedicule in the center in which the 17th-century crucifix is set. Large canvases can be admired: among them are those depicting the inspired Caravaggesque St. Matthew, the St. Jerome copy of the same subject visible in the canvas in St. Peter’s in Rome, and the Beheading of St. Gavin by the Calabrian Mattia Preti, considered one of the most important pictorial works visible in the city.
