At the center of the main road axes that made up the urban fabric of the ancient town of medieval origin, above a cross of streets with a clear symbolic meaning, the church of San Nicolò Vescovo emerges. This was the subject of repeated modifications and additions, starting from the second half of the seventeenth century (1656), interventions which ended shortly before the middle of the eighteenth century. Not much time passed and it was demolished; it is curious that the demolition was carried out when the new place of worship had not yet been consecrated: its construction began fifteen years after the completion of the previous one, in 1755. The consecration of the new parish church was celebrated, with the works not yet completed, on 14 May 1777 by the bishop of Ales-Terralba, Monsignor G.Maria Pilo, as documented by the plaque located to the right of the entrance to the church, ( at that time the deconsecrated churches were demolished to prevent bandits from settling there to obtain immunity, based on the law of the right of asylum). The construction works around the old church continued for over thirty years until the construction of a church, much larger than the previous one, whose plan corresponds to the current one. This is the only church in Marmilla dedicated to “Santu Nicolau”, bishop of Myra, title decreed
by Julius II in 1503. The Saint was originally from Patara di Lycia, where he was born on 15 March 270 and died in Myra on 6 December 343, an ancient Hellenic city of Lycia), from Asia Minor, in what is now southern Turkey: hence the name of Saint Nicholas of Myra. Instead, the name “of Bari” refers to the place where his relics were brought and are currently located. In fact, we know that in 1087, sixty-two sailors took possession of the saint’s relics and handed them over to a Benedictine monk, who built a basilica in his honor. The first traces of his cult date back to the 5th century, but the evidence of his apostolate became abundant starting from the 6th century, arriving in Sardinia during the Byzantine domination. We find it documented since 1112, in the condaghe of San Pietro di Silki. In the life of the Church, the cult of Saint Nicholas is still the most widespread, second to that of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Structural features
The parish church of Simala imitated the seventeenth-century model of the cathedrals of Cagliari and Ales (works by the Genoese architect Domenico Spotorno) and the eighteenth-century model of the cathedral of Oristano. The building has a Latin cross plan with a single nave, four side chapels, independent until 1895 (when it was decided to connect them to each other through the construction of round arches, probably to give greater breadth to the environment, creating the optical illusion of walking through a building with three naves) and two large chapels dedicated to the Crucifix and the Madonna of the Rosary, built in 1788 on the sides of the transept. The naves are set on two architectural orders, which mark the vaults and arches through mouldings. The roofing of the rooms (nave and chapels) is characterized by classic barrel vaults
extrados, while the dome is characterized by its pavilion cap, which covers an area, characterized internally by an original rectangular plan, while on the outside it presents a planimetric profile of an octagonal shape, with irregular sides and segments.
At the top of the dome there is a very small lantern (fake lantern), also octagonal in shape. On the right side of the presbytery stands the sacristy, with a rectangular plan, covered by a pavilion vault, with the ridge equipped with eight lunettes, arranged laterally (two on each side) along the internal facades. Inside this room, the ancient stone floor has been preserved, which was originally found throughout the church, before the nineteenth-century marble one was built. This last flooring was affected by other additions at the beginning of the twentieth century, finally undergoing alterations with the “restoration” interventions carried out several years ago.
On the left side of the presbytery, until recently, there was the ancient parish oratory which was later transformed into a sacristy and subsequently destroyed during the works carried out in the 1980s.
The main façade has a double inflection terminal (a motif also repeated in the elevations of the transept, the presbytery and the side chapels) and two rectangular windows, arranged symmetrically to the central one, archivolted and positioned in axis with respect to the large entrance portal , which overlooks the churchyard. Once the church was finished, in the second half of the 18th century, the bell tower was built on the right side in imitation of models popular with Piedmontese architects and military engineers present in Sardinia in that period. The latter has a square plan and the bell tower is covered internally by a small pavilion vault, which externally has
onion shape, with pointed windows, like those of the bell tower of Oristano, designed by the engineer Davisto. The building of worship, while retaining its original appearance as a whole, has undergone various interventions over the centuries, often without an organic project, internally and externally, which have partially distorted its shape, details and furnishings.
Adjacent to the church there was the relative cemetery, rich in sculptures and epigraphs, valuable works by sculptors, marble workers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, belonging to noble or wealthy families, currently deposited elsewhere waiting to find suitable accommodation (ask if have been fixed). Near the church there are the buildings of the oratory of the SS. Rosario and Monte Granatico.
Artifacts and furnishings
The church is enriched in the internal areas, on the sides of the transept and in the chapels, by marble, wooden and silver furnishings and artefacts, of great historical-artistic value, coming from prestigious workshops. Typical examples of eighteenth-nineteenth century sculpture are included, almost all of them, by the marble worker Giovanni Battista Franco (by Lanzo d’Intelvi, exponent of one of the main families of Lombard marble workers active in Sardinia between 1769-1830), who expressed his mastery , in the Baroque and Rococo styles, as evidenced by: the three marble altars with balustrade; the base and basin of the baptismal font; the stoup. Other works by Sardinian sculptors, such as: the four wooden altars, carved and polychrome, in fake marble, created by Lorenzo Gallo and Antioco Diana. The latter, from Sant Antioco, also created the compass, among the largest in Sardinia, above which was positioned the nineteenth-century pipe organ and the covering of the baptismal font, in carved and fire-gilded chestnut (all the interior of which it was possible to admire, in the past, two paintings on wood, positioned on the internal facades of the two doors, with the representation respectively of the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan, with Saint John the Baptist blessing on one side and of the Holy Trinity on the other). In the upper part the compass is crowned by the portrait of San Nicolò Vescovo. The three marble altars are dedicated to St. Nicholas, bishop, owner of the church and patron of the town (the main altar, whose original part, of baroque workmanship, dates back to 1856, and has a neo-classical style), to S. Raffaele Archangel (left side), and to San Giuseppe (right side). The other four wooden altars are dedicated to the Virgin of Itria (first side chapel on the left, starting from the entrance); to S. Anna (first side chapel on the right); to the Blessed Virgin of the SS. Rosary (in the left transept) and the SS. Crucifix (in the right transept). There are also valuable wooden works, such as the access doors to the sacristy and the ancient oratory, annexed to the church, created by the master Lorenzo Gallo and the carved and polychrome wooden statues, almost all from the 18th century. Among the latter the statue of St. Raffaele Arcangelo stands out, attributed (together with others) by Dr. Raffaele Delogu, to the most important Sardinian sculptor of the eighteenth century, Giuseppe Antonio Lonis, of Senorbì, and to his Cagliari workshop of Stampace. Some of the statues date back to the 1600s and 1700s and come from the disappeared village of Gemussi, such as that of San Luigi. The sacred furnishings comprise some works by Sardinian silversmiths from the fifteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (censer, aspersion and processional cross), eighteenth-century sacred vestments, Sardinian carpets from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Other works surveyed in the 1930s by Doctor Delogu, on behalf of the Superintendence of Architectural and Artistic Heritage, were destroyed or dispersed. The documents preserved in the parish archives, from the seventeenth century to the present day, are also of great historical value.
