Church of the Saints Gavinus, Protus and Januarius

The parish church of the Saints Gavinus, Protus and Januarius is found in Muros, in the street “via Roma”. A commemorative plaque on the wall of the chapel dedicated to Saint John the Baptist dates the foundation of the church to the second half of the Seventeenth century, by order of the noble Don Francesco Martinez. The apse, instead, is older, together with the altar dedicated to the Holy Martyrs from Porto Torres, patron saints of Muros. The urban location and the coat of arms of Porto Torres, painted in the centre of the vault of the sacristy, suggest that the room once functioned as a private or semi-public oratory, belonging to the noble family from Muros. The simple façade of the church is of the flat type with a gable roof top, strongly characterised by the gabled doorframe with niche and oculus. The niche once hosted a little statue of the Virgin Mary with Child, today located inside the church. The plan of the church today is the result of successive annexations; originally it was limited to the presbytery and the apse. The main body of the church, lacking openings, is covered by a barrel vault, set over a thin moulded frame, although, the most significant space is the presbytery and the transversal body of the church with the two lateral chapels facing one another, today dedicated to Saint John the Baptist on the southern side, and to the Immaculate Conception on the northern. The two chapels are covered by barrel vaults, set over a wide moulded frame. Before the renovation work in 1980, the pavement of the two chapels was elevated compared to the floor of the main body of the church. The main body has, only in the chapel of Saint John, a decoration with geometrical figures that divides the apse from the presbytery. Instead, the chapel of the Immaculate Conception was annexed only at the beginning of the 20th century by the will of two benefactor spouses: Marianna Usai and Antonio Giuseppe Tolu. The oldest part of the Church is the presbytery, covered by a cross vault with a gemma pendula in key position, showing the Praying Virgin. Two corbels over which the vault is set are engraved with anthropomorphic figures, a male and a female one. The shell shaped domed vault covers the exedra of the apse and is decorated with six leaves at the top. The soffit is divided into lacunars and has phytomorphic decorations, typical of the Sardinian decorative tradition of the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th (tn* a soffit, in architecture, is the visible underside of an arch, balcony, beam, cornice, staircase, vault or any other architectural element). The vault of the sacristy is decorated with simple bas-reliefs in stucco and, given the different techniques with which the different plant elements were made, it seems to have been commissioned to non-local workers whom we have no information about.

Source: Muros Cultural Centre Renato Loria; “Territory and Heritage, Know to give value” (in Italian), Gallery editors