The Capuchins founded their first Sardinian convent in 1597, on the hill of Buoncammino, under the invocation of St. Anthony of Padua.
The church, very bare and essential, originally had a single-nave hall and three open chapels on the right side, only to be later enlarged to its present size. In the mid-18th century it was equipped with Baroque altars in polychrome inlaid marble, the work of Comacine marble workers. Of special note is the antependium of the high altar, depicting the six Cagliari martyrs whose bodies are preserved inside. Other works include the large 17th-century painting in the third chapel on the right, depicting Saints Felice da Cantalice and Lucifer bishop of Cagliari, by the painter Pantaleone Calvo, and the stupendous wooden group with the Immaculate Conception and Blessed John Duns Scotus, an early 18th-century Neapolitan sculpture, kept in the sacristy. In the Buoncammino convent lived St. Ignatius of Laconi, canonized in 1951, and Blessed Nicholas of Gesturi, elevated to the honors of the altars on Oct. 3, 1999. Both rest here, the former in the shrine built in the 1950s at the end of the left aisle, near his cell, and the latter in a large sarcophagus placed in the central chapel on the right. A museum entirely dedicated to Brother Nicholas can also be visited, in which many of his personal mementos have been collected.
