Chiesa di San Michele (Church of San Michele), Cagliari

The monumental complex of San Michele is composed of the monumental baroque church and the former residence, once a Jesuit novitiate in the city of Cagliari ; between via Azuni and via Ospedale, and is officiated by the Jesuit fathers. The sacred building, for its architectural lines, for the decorative apparatus and for the sculptural and pictorial works it houses, represents the main testimony of Baroque and Rococo art in Sardinia. Attached to the church stood the former Jesuit novitiate house, a Military Hospital since 1848, now the Military Department of Forensic Medicine. The elements that most characterize the exterior of the church of San Michele are the particular façade and the octagonal dome. Regarding the façade, completed in 1705, it is worth saying that it belongs more to the former novitiate house, now a military hospital, than to the church itself. The artistic style of the facade still refers to late mannerist models. It has a retable structure, in clayey tuff, and is composed of three orders which, taken together, reproduce a typical scheme of seventeenth-century wooden altars. The first (lower) order is composed of three arches that lead into a cross-vaulted portico, through which the novitiate and the church were accessed. This is composed of three round arches, which open between four columns with particularly worked capitals, which support the entablature ; above, in the intermediate level of the facade, divided into three parts as below, there are three rectangular windows, framed by caryatids and surmounted by broken tympanums, inside which there are three coats of arms. In the upper part there is a classical aedicule where, within a niche, there is the statue of the patron saint: the archangel Saint Michael, of Genoese school and origin. The pavilion dome rests on an octagonal drum (reference to the theology of the eighth day: the resurrection of Christ) on which four windows open, alternating with blind octagons. Covered with scale tiles, it has pilasters on the external corners and is surmounted by a skylight. At the base of the dome, there are two bell towers , both with two lights; of which one, the largest, the one located on the right of the facade, has recently been restored.

Although consecrated in 1538, this Jesuit church is best known for its lavish 18th-century decor, considered the finest example of baroque styling in Sardinia. The spectacle starts outside with the ebullient triple-arched facade and continues through the vast colonnaded atrium into the magnificent octagonal interior. Here six heavily decorated chapels radiate out from the centre, capped by a grand, brightly frescoed dome. Also of note is the sacristy, with its vivid frescoes and intricate inlaid wood. Before you go inside, take a minute to admire the massive four-columned pulpit in the atrium. This was built and named in honour of the Spanish emperor Carlos V, who is said to have delivered a stirring speech from it before setting off on a fruitless campaign against Arab corsairs in Tunisia.

It is the historic Cagliari seat of the powerful and cultured Jesuit order, made up of three buildings, as well as the main testimony of Baroque art in the capital of Sardinia. In the upper part of the Stampace district of Cagliari , near the Sperone gate , stands the Jesuit complex of San Michele. It consists of three buildings: the convent preceded by a covered atrium and vestibule, the former novitiate house, active until 1848 and now home to the military hospital, and the church, built at the end of the seventeenth century, before the cathedral, on top of a previous oratory , and consecrated in 1738. The Jesuits, expelled from the island (1848), returned to their church eighty years later. ***PH***