San Pietro di Ponte
CHIESA DI San Pietro di Ponte
The Church of San Pietro di Ponte is located within the municipal cemetery of Quartu Sant'Elena. This ancient church was originally built in the 12th century and then rebuilt in the late 13th century by skilled late-Romanesque craftsmen of the Giudicato of Cagliari.
The site corresponds to the ancient Quarto Suso, a short distance from a Roman bridge along the road from Carales to Ferraria.
The building, characterised by a single nave with a southeast-facing apse, has a façade adorned with limestone and sandstone ashlars. The ribbed bell tower, with elegant small arches and ogival light, rises majestically above the façade, while the central portal, now curved, was originally intended to be architraved and fitted with an overhead arch.
On the outside of the church, along the façade and sides, there are pilasters, pilasters and hanging arches finely decorated with geometric motifs and zoo-anthropomorphic symbols. In particular, on the façade divided into three sections, one can see rows of ashlars with numerous accommodations for ceramic basins, although most of them have been lost over time.
Other lodgings can be found in the centina of the portal and between the corbels of the arches, where some examples of ceramic basins can still be admired.
Inside, the single nave is concluded to the south-east by the apse with a round triumphal arch set on two corbels, one of which has phytomorphic decoration. The roof has wooden trusses supported by two ogival arches in the Catalan Gothic tradition.
Initially donated to the abbey of San Vittore di Marseille in 1119, it remained under their custody until 1338, when it passed to the archiepiscopal refectory of Cagliari. Through the centuries, the church underwent periods of neglect and restoration, until it became an oratory in the context of the modern cemetery of Quartu Sant'Elena.