The Basilica of S. Antioco of Sulki (south-west of Sardinia, Italy): evolution of architecture through the reading of the elevations

Antonio CAZZANI¹ / Alessandro RUGGIERI²
(¹Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche e Geologiche – University of Cagliari (Italy) / ²Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici, Paesaggistici, Storici, Artistici ed Etnoantropologici di Cagliari e Oristano, Italy)

Keywords: Romanesque monuments, Epigraphic sources, Presbytery, Marble, Architectural decoration

Abstract:
The Sanctuary dedicated to Antiochus, a Christian martyr of the third century, stands on an area originally occupied by the ancient Phoenician-Punic and then Roman Sulki. The area corresponds to the funeral suburban area of the city. A short drive away is the Tophet, a sacred area destined to sacrifice and interment, originally of children, as a result of animals.
The shrine was built on the top of a group of chamber tombs from the Phoenician Punic re-functionalized in the early Christian era, through the implementation of a dense network of tunnels that put in communication the individual subterranean rooms and realizing, the only case in Sardinia, of the Christian Catacomb. Inside the sanctuary excavations have brought to light a baptismal font dating from the fifth century, a time when it was already Sulki archbishopric. The oldest part of the building dates back to the sixth century and is one of the finest examples of Byzantine architecture in Sardinia.
The plant resumed the dell’Apostoleion of Byzantine Constantinople, a Greek cross with arms barrel vaults and a central dome. The installation of the remaining sixth century domed body and what appears today as the transept. The sanctuary was renovated in fact deeply in the Romanesque period when the plant was modified from a central longitudinal ends with two apses. The transition from a Greek cross inscribed in Latin cross bears witness to the Church’s approach to the Papacy Sardinian and a progressive emancipation from the capital of the East. The building is now bare but from epigraphic sources from dozens of fragments of marble and richly finished we can sense the presence, in the tenth or eleventh century, a rich liturgical furniture and architectural decoration. This furniture boasted a presbytery and a ciborium in Luni marble bas-reliefs of the invoice as well as numerous high, such as to suggest the presence of Sulki workers trained at the imperial court.