The church of San Pietro del Crocifisso (or delle Immagini) is one of the most important examples of Romanesque-Pisan art in Sardinia. Located around 3 km from the town of Bulzi, immersed in picturesque surroundings, it was part of a monastic compound of which very little has survived.
The outside features a two-tone facade enhanced with clear limestone arches. The front part, arranged into three orders, houses the architrave portal, with monolithic jambs, leaf capitals and smooth architrave supported by a lunette. The latter is decorated with a relief depicting a figure in a praying position, with two bearded men alongside.
There are no documents confirming when the church was built but the completed work can be dated to the first half of the XIII century. Proof of this comes from an inscription painted on a wooden beam by Iohannes, bishop of Ampurias. We can, therefore, pinpoint the church’s construction to the first twenty years of the XII century.
The definition “of the Crucifix” and “of Images” is perhaps down to the presence, in the past, of a thirteenth-century wooden assembly of the Removal of Christ from the Cross, now housed in the parish church in Bulzi, and an eighteenth-century pictorial polyptych, the Retablo de las Imagenes (the Altarpiece of Images).
