The church sits on a slope at the foot of Monte Ortobene, in an area on the edge of the city intended as parkland.
It replaced the rural church dating from 1625, named after the Madonna Addolorata, so cherished by the people of Nuoro that they would gather there for the feasts dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The writer, Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) dedicated her last book of the same name to the rural church; nowadays her remains are buried in the building.
Indeed, in 1959, in anticipation of the transfer of the writer’s remains buried in the monumental cemetery of Verano in Roma, the church’s renovation work was finished from a project by the artist Giovanni Ciusa Romagna (1907-1958).
The project involved replacing the seventeenth-century building, by then in terrible condition, with a construction identical to the original layout. Indeed, the current church is arranged into a single hall which ends in an apse and is articulated by a series of six arches either side. The caretaker’s house, also described in Deledda’s book, backs on to the hall.
The outside is built with blocks of marble; the gabled facade ends with a bell gable with single fornix, and has a portal and quadrangular light.
The building’s simplicity contrasts with the extravagant decoration of the furnishings created by the artists from Sassari Gavino Tilocca and Eugenio Tavolara.
