San Pietro a Ponte Church
The church of San Pietro di Ponte, is included in the municipal cemetery. The site corresponds to the ancient Quartu Suso, a short distance from a Roman bridge along the road from Carales to Ferraria. The ornamental repertoire of the building indicates its reconstruction by late Romanesque workers active in the Giudicato of Cagliari in the last quarter of the 13th century.
The hall is single-naved with a south-eastern apse punctuated on the façade by Catalan Gothic-inspired diaphragm arches. The recesses that contained the polychrome majolica bowls are still visible, of which only a few fragments remain.
The façade is surmounted by a high pediment with a very small and disproportionate mullioned window in the centre with ogival arches separated by a squat column. Above rises a bell gable with an ogival light inserted between the rampant arches.
In the centre of the façade is the portal with an arch with unequal ashlars surmounted by an eyebrow, also round-arched, set on two small moulded corbels that contain other cup-marks with remains of polychrome ceramics.
The door has recently been tampered with, with the removal of the architrave, traces of which now remain in the jambs. The building faces south-east and has a façade divided into three mirrors, consisting of two long, narrow pilasters and overlapping, frontally fluted blocks.
The pilasters are joined together and end with vertical corner elements. Three series of hanging arches rest on narrow and high corbels with sculpted bull's heads.
On the right side elevation, a walled-in door similar to the one described is visible with an architrave still in situ. The side walls are also crowned by hanging arches similar to those on the façade and are largely half-hidden by the leaning of storehouses, loculi and mortuary chapels built in this century.
The semi-circular body of the apse protrudes from the rear gabled and undecorated façade, covered with a slightly outward sloping pitch and with a small architraved and walled-in window on the inside.
Inside, the building has a single rectangular nave closed to the south-east by the semicircular apse emphasised by a round arch. The roof of wooden beams resting on two ogival diaphragm arches is of Catalan-Gothic design.
No traces remain of the late Byzantine structure donated to San Vittore in 1119, so it is likely that the Vittorini received ruins or only the site named after the saint to whom the church was dedicated.
The simple decoration of the church recalls some elements already present in other Vittorini buildings from the first half of the 12th century: among these are the taurine protomes that adorn some corbels, the Greek cross carved in a corbel of the side elevation and the Pisan cross that stands out in the lunettes of three small arches. In reproducing these decorative motifs, the stonemasons from Quarto revealed technical skill and a great deal of imagination.
According to evaluations and stylistic comparisons, the construction of the building dates back to the late 13th century, although the existence of a church on this site dedicated to San Pietro di Ponte is documented at much earlier dates. In a document of 1119, it is listed among those that Guglielmo, archbishop of Cagliari donated to the Vittorini Order and is also mentioned in another Victorian document of 1164 because it was the subject of a dispute.
In a subsequent document of 1218, Pope Honorius III reaffirmed the apostolic protection for the monastery of San Saturno, again determining its properties, including the small church of San Pietro di Ponte in Quartese.
The last document attesting to the Vittorina property dates back to 1338.
After this date, in 1444, it became part of the archiepiscopal mensa of Cagliari together with the remaining possessions of San Vittore aggregated to the Monastery of San Saturno.
Thereafter, the building probably fell into neglect. In a document from 1599, the bishop of Cagliari describes it without a door and furnishings and orders the obrieri (bursars) of Cagliari to restore it through quests. Since the pastoral visit in 1761, the state of neglect has continued. In 1872, the bishop wrote, after his visit to Quartu, that the building was being restored inside the new cemetery where it would be used as a cemetery oratory.
Source: 'Urban itineraries between archaeology and history' - Liceo Artistico Brotzu and Quartu Sant'Elena Municipal Administration