The Church of Santa Maria del Monte, formerly the oratory of Cagliari’s oldest confraternity and now the seat of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Home to the Confraternity of the same name established by papal bull in 1530 and confirmed in 1551, composed of noble people whose main task was to offer assistance and give burial to those condemned to death, it was built beginning in 1568.
Architecturally, two building phases can be distinguished: one, the front, definitely Gothic, the other already Renaissance. The plain-walled elevation has in the upper part a section of framed arch conglobated in the wall apparatus and interrupted by a semicircular arched window.
The building has a single nave without transept, with the presbytery developed as a real chapel with a square and narrower plan, unlike the two bays of the nave, which are rectangular. Different systems can also be seen in the upper roofs: in the chancel the vaulting is stellar with ogives and five pendulous gems; in the nave bays there are simple diagonal ribbed vaults. It can be traced, in the context of Sardinian churches, to the typology of the parish church of Padria and in Cagliari to the neighboring churches of Purissima and Sant’Eulalia.
After the suppression of the Confraternity in 1866, the church had various destinations: second seat of the Court of Assizes, municipal music school until 1921, dormitory and refectory of the small Providence house.
