The Church of Sant'Avendrace reopens to the public within the year, with an important novelty: during the restoration works, traces of the Punic and Roman periods emerged.
"Pretending nothing would have been easier - explains the mayor Paolo Truzzu - but we want to work to have full awareness of what we have been and what we will be. For this it was necessary to be patient, but our intention is to give back to everyone something more beautiful and more interesting because we have great respect for the history of our city ".
The works, which began in 2018 to secure and restore solidity to the structure, heavily affected by humidity, have brought out important archaeological discoveries that have led to a postponement of the closure of the construction site.
"We had started with consolidation works - confirmed the mayor of Cagliari - but we found a bit of everything".
Three hundred burials have been found, as explained by the archaeologist Giovanna Pietra.
On the one hand, therefore, history, and on the other the desire of the church to embrace its faithful again.
"I am happy - said Don Alessandro Simula - to see how the large number of burials found inside the church has confirmed the importance of that place for the whole village of Sant'Avendrace which until the early 1900s was detached from the city. I am fascinated and proud of what emerged from these excavations and we will undertake to take care of and preserve this treasure that represents our history and our identity. But at the same time I want to launch my appeal: give us back the church as soon as possible in order to restore in motion a parish community that goes on anyway but does it with great difficulty ".
(Unioneonline / vl)