Sardinia, like much of mainland Italy, is a fiercely Christian society with most of the population being Roman Catholic with a good proportion of the population still attending Sunday mass.
Yet because of the island’s intensely vivid sense of its past, many of the religious festivals are imbued with a strongly pagan feel, and can be a real sight to behold.
There are a good number of small chapels dotted around the Sardinian countryside, called chiese novenari – most of which would be very easy to miss, except during times of pilgrimage. At these times the small lodgings that surround these chapels fill with pilgrims who have come to venerate the saint honoured in the church. You may also spot various roadside shrines, often portraying the Virgin Mary.
