Indipendence Square

The square has recently been re-paved as part of a redevelopment project in the historical center that has led to the unification on the same level of Piazza Indipendenza, the churchyard and the bell tower square.
The work was carried out in the streets of the historic center, which were paved with cobblestones both in the upper part of the Via Orientale Sarda (Via San Nicolò, in particular) and in the lower part (almost all of Via Roma, once the main street of the village). In the cen of the square once stood the ‘Monumento ai caduti’ (war memorial), now repositioned in a small tree-lined square in front of the churchyard.
Until the 1950s, the ‘Church of the Rosary’ also overlooked Piazza Indipendenza. The façade and roof were later modified and the church was converted into a parish hall.
From Piazza Indipendenza, the churchyard is accessed through an ornate white portal, detached from the central body to act as a façade, enriched by lateral pilasters (vertical bands in relief) surmounted by a triangular tympanum above which there is a statue of Christ.
A few meters from the fake façade rises the tall square bell tower, leaning against the perimeter walls of the sacristy, with a classic Roman numeration clock surmounting one of the ogival windows of the belfry. The clock was placed on the belfry in 1858 (when the town’s parish priest was Don Emanuele Lai, rector of Baunei from 1855 to 1909) by a watchmaker originally from Baunei, a certain Sebastiano Duccu, as a Latin inscription above the entrance door of the belfry recalls:’Horologium istud artifex Sebastianus Duccu Bauneensis fecit Rectoris Emanuelis Lai ac bauneensis populi cura anno cristiano MDCCCLVIII’; (‘Baunei craftsman Sebastiano Duccu built this clock in 1858 with the involvement of the Rector Emanuele Lai and the people of Baunei.’).
During the renovation work on the square, the ancient stone treading surface of the entrance, once reserved for men, was found a few metres from the bell tower. Some rooms of the 19th-century building overlooking the square have for years housed the ethnographic museum ‘Sa Dommu Eccia’, set up between the ground and first floors of the building.