Basilica di Saccargia

This is a 12th-century Romanesque church with a very tall bell-tower and an almost millennium-old historical legacy. You usually have to pay to visit but we lucked out and visited on a day when a wedding was being held and they let us visit for free. The floor plan is in the shape of a Latin cross and measures 29 meters long and 6 meters wide. The beautiful rectangular bell-tower reaches over 40 meters into the sky and is visible for miles in every direction. It’s hard to believe it was built over 9 centuries ago!

There are two interior chapels with domed ceilings and central apse with 13th-century Byzantine frescoes depicting scenes from the New Testament. The builders of the church combined black volcanic basalt with while marble and the effect of the colors when the sunlight hits is just spectacular.

This is one of the most beautiful churches in Sardinia and one of the few (perhaps the only) which is open to the public. It’s located in the area of Codrongianos on an isolated stretch of the highway leading from Sassari to Olbia. On the outside, the church possesses a strange elegance thanks to its gorgeous bell-tower which is decorated with alternating blocks of marble and basalt. It was designed to recreate the spotted color of a pious cow of local legend. In fact, the term “saccargia” means “spotted cow.” The interior has a choral area full of frescoes of Christ the Redeemer and the Apostles and a beautiful pulpit with a statue of the Virgin.

¡If you’d like to see a lovely example of Pisan-Romanesque architecture, you can’t miss this church of the way to Sassari. It was built in 1116 and you can visit the church and enjoy the well-conserved frescoes for only €2.