The Madonna del Carmelo Church, also known as the Church of Nostra Signora del Carmine, can be found in the old town centre of Bosa.
It is one of those artistic expressions which marked the development of Baroque in Sardinia.
The church and adjoining Carmelite Convent were built between 1770 and 1779, where the Church of Nostra Signora del Soccorso stood, but the church was only consecrated in 1810.
The facade, in Piedmont-Baroque style, has three decreasing orders, articulated by cornices and half-pilasters with capitals in red trachyte, with windows in the centre and is rounded off with a curvilinear niche. The curved portal is held up by a cornice displaying the stem of the Carmelites.
Internally, the church has a quadrangular layout with a single nave and it is barrel-vaulted, as are the four side chapels.
It preserves a significant historical and artistic heritage, dating from the end of the XVI and the XX centuries, consisting of wooden and marble altars, sculptures, high-reliefs, musical instruments, oil-on-canvas paintings and wall paintings, silver liturgical items, devotional furnishings and altar cloths with traditional Filet lace.
Overall, this heritage is of particular cultural interest because it bears witness to a commissioning, like that of the Carmelites, which had a significant impact on the culture and religiousness of the people of Bosa between the XVI and the XIX centuries.
Furthermore, it is proof of local artistic production marked by the influx of people coming from a wider national panorama, especially Neapolitans and Ligurians, and the presence of artists not from the island with a late Baroque leaning working on the island, including the marble workers Giovanni Battista Spazzi, responsible for the church’s high altar (1791) and Domenico Franco, who created the marble altar of the chapel now dedicated to the Sacred Heart, in the early years of the nineteenth century.
