The Basilica of Santa Giusta

Origin and architecture

The actual Basilica, built mainly in Sinis sandstone, was erected between 1135 and 1145 A.C. and for all the Late Middle Ages, from 1119 till 1503, was Diocesan See and the country town was part of the Giudicato (Sardinian district) of Arborea, in the Curatoria (Subdivision) of Simaxis. Unfortunately, no one knows who has been the Architect or original founder of the Church, one supposes, however, that it probably was backed from Sardinian Judges, generally those whom make a contribution to the building of imposing edifices devoted to the holy cult. However, now it’s one of the most important example of Romanesque art in Sardinia, one of the most emblematic of this style. Indoors the Basilica is constituted of one nave and two aisles, of which the nave much higher than the asiles, and all three are delimited by 14 imposing columns monolithic: 11 in various kind of marble and 3 in granite, with 8 Corinthian capitals, 1 calcareous, 3 composite and 2 Ionic marmoreal ones; surely the provenance of the columns is to give to the Phoenician city of Tharros. The two side chapels, the ones of Rosario (rosery) and Spirito Santo (Holy Spirit), are not original, sure enough, they were built in XVII cent. A.C. probably financed from Domenico Casula and Chiara Deidda, of whom one can find their graves. The apse and the altar, or the Presbytery, until 1847 shew a wall which divided them all from the rest of the Church. It was destroyed jointly to the wooden altar and what it comprised on the same year, at Archibishop Saba’s behest to start off to a marmoreal banister. Exactly beneath the Presbytery, of same dimensions, one finds the crypt where initially was buried the Saint afterwards followed by the family’s maidservants. Here we find 4 small aisles with cross vaulting supported by 6 small marmoreal columns. Today the room contains the three Saints relics.

This underground passage, as attested to from several baked clays retrieved towards the end of the last millennium in the parvis of the Cathedral, has almost surely been the first church. One thinks, therefore, that in IV-III cent. B.C. there might have been a Temple in honor of Demetra, wheat Goddess, and her daughter Kore.

The actual bell tower was completed in 1908 on a project by Dionigi Scanu. The roof church has totally been remade further to some restoration occurred in the last twenty years of the present century.