Santa Maria del Regno is a Romanesque

Romanesque architecture

Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...

 church in Ardara

Ardara

Ardara is a small town in County Donegal, part of the Province of Ulster in Ireland. It is located on the N56 road.Ardara is a small town with a population of 578 . Over recent years the town has seen some great growth with a lot of the pubs and shops being renovated...

, province of Sassari

Province of Sassari

The Province of Sassari is a province in the autonomous island region of Sardinia in Italy. Its capital is the city of Sassari.-Geography:It has an area of 4,282 km², and a total population of 322,326 . There are 66 municipalities in the province, the largest of which are Sassari The...

, Sardinia

Sardinia

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

.

History

The church, together with the annexed castle of which ruins remain today, was built in the 11th century by Giorgia, daughter of the Giudice of Torres, as a Palace Chapel. The church is mentioned in the Libellus Judicum Turritanorum of the 13th century.

Overview

The church was built in dark basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

 stone by Pisan workers (the island in the Middle Ages was under strong influence from the maritime Republic of Pisa

Republic of Pisa

The Republic of Pisa was a de facto independent state centered on the Tuscan city of Pisa during the late tenth and eleventh centuries. It rose to become an economic powerhouse, a commercial center whose merchants dominated Mediterranean and Italian trade for a century before being surpassed and...

). The façade is divided into five sectors and has a salient-shaped façade. In the middle is the portal, surmounted by a double mullioned window. The whole exterior of the edifice is characterized by false columns (lesene) and Lombard band

Lombard band

A Lombard band is a decorative blind arcade, usually exterior, often used during the Romanesque and Gothic periods of architecture.Lombard bands are believed to have been first used during the First Romanesque Period of the early 11th Century. At that time, they were the most common architectural...

s; on the right are the remains of the square bell tower, which is missing the upper part.

The interior, on a rectangular plan, has a nave and two aisles divided by columns whose capitals have flower motifs. The nave has a wooden truss

Truss

In architecture and structural engineering, a truss is a structure comprising one or more triangular units constructed with straight members whose ends are connected at joints referred to as nodes. External forces and reactions to those forces are considered to act only at the nodes and result in...

es ceiling, while the aisles are groin vault

Groin vault

A groin vault or groined vault is produced by the intersection at right angles of two barrel vaults. The word groin refers to the edge between the intersecting vaults; cf. ribbed vault. Sometimes the arches of groin vaults are pointed instead of round...

ed. In the semi-circular apse is the large retablo

Retablo

A Retablo or lamina is a Latin American devotional painting, especially a small popular or folk art one using iconography derived from traditional Catholic church art....

, the largest 16th century polyptych in Sardinia, located behind the high altar. The table portrays several prohets and saints, as well as episodes in the life of the Virgin Mary. In the middle, within a niche, is the wooden statue of Nostra Signora del Regno, a "Madonna with Child" wearing royal symbols. The polyptych is dated 1515.

The church's columns have 17th century paintings with Apostles and other Saints, while also present is a lesser retablo from the same school, a carved wooden pulpit

Pulpit

Pulpit is a speakers' stand in a church. In many Christian churches, there are two speakers' stands at the front of the church. Typically, the one on the left is called the pulpit...

 and an epigraph

Epigraph (literature)

In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional...

celebrating the consecration of the church on May 7, 1107.