Oratory of Holy Cross
Built up before 1587, it stands on the left side of Saint Peter’s church, linked to it through an inner door, and on the front of the Town Hall. This building, originally consecrated to Saint Lucy, with a bull by Pope Sisto V, dated 18th October 1587, was given to Holy Cross Confraternity. It is common knowledge that confraternities, in order to strengthen people’s faith, built up oratories or readapted buildings previously used to other religious services. Thus the building, in the year preceding 1707, was called Oratory of Holy Cross. Its plant has a Latin-crossed single nave 25 metres long and 8 wide, covered by a vaulted roof. It has one big central chapel and two side ones, once entitled to Madonna del Gonfalone (patron saint of the Archconfraternity) and Saint Lucy, and a big sacristy. In 1707 the archconfraternity boss, noble Don Agostino Carta, had the oratory restored and covered with the vaulted roof (Spanedda, 1989). Another restoring was made in 1871 by the rector Delrio, who made renew the floor. During World War II, when the church was taken by the Army, and temporarily used as barracks, some eighteenth-century vestments, that is to say the side panels of the main altar, which showed some scenes from Christ’s passions, disappeared. The two beautiful paintings, the Supper and the Descent, which adorned the central chapel walls, are lost too.
The platform, hit by a lightening, was demolished in 1969 (Spanedda, 1989). At present the building is used as parish hall.