Complesso conventuale di Santa Caterina, Finalborgo site features

The church was built for three naves and does not have them now. It dates from the first half of the fifteenth century and was originally three naves separated by columns in Pietra del Finale — two of square form and one semicircular — facing north. Later centuries altered it to suit changing ecclesiastical norms, including moving the apse to the opposite side; it was remodelled again in the early nineteenth century and again when the complex became a prison.

The frescoes are early and they are about the Virgin. The interior conserves cycles of the early fifteenth century, representing principally episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary.

Two Gothic doorways on the south flank are blocked up. They are called delle Donne and degli Uomini — of the women and of the men — and they carry the noble arms of the Del Carretto and the Agnus Dei.

The cloisters are the Renaissance part and they were a cardinal's. The two communicating cloisters beside the body of the church were built between 1500 and 1530 at the wish of cardinal Carlo Domenico Del Carretto.

The bell tower lost its spire to an earthquake. Raised on an apsidal chapel, it suffered the demolition of its cuspide after the 1887 earthquake that struck the Ligurian Ponente. Its painted clock dial is dated 1561.

The cells inside the campanile

Built in 1864 by the Genoese directorate of the Genio militare of the Kingdom of Italy: nineteenth-century punishment cells, each about 170 by 90 centimetres, with no external opening except a single spyhole above the door. Perfectly conserved and visitable.

The graffiti on their walls and doors

Names, dates and lines drawn to indicate the time passed, in conditions the record describes as an absolute absence of human rights and personal dignity. They are the most direct document in the building.

A clock that ran anticlockwise

The campanile's painted dial is dated 1561, with the original peculiarity of an anticlockwise rotation — to compensate for the shadow of the sundials, which at this geographical position moves from west towards east, the opposite of the sun's course.

The two walled-up Gothic portals

On the south flank, called delle Donne and degli Uomini, both blocked, carrying the Del Carretto arms and the Agnus Dei. Separate doors for women and men, and neither opens now.

The two cloisters of 1500-1530

Communicating, Renaissance, built at the wish of cardinal Carlo Domenico Del Carretto. They are what a visitor crosses to reach the museum, and the lift up to it is in the second of them.

350,000 years in the rooms above

The Museo Archeologico del Finale, open here since 1931, conserves prehistoric finds documenting over 350,000 years of human presence in this territory — the caves of the Finalese, including the Arene Candide, emptied into one building.