Chiesa di San Paragorio, Noli site features

The plan is a basilica with a crypt used as an oratory. Three naves, and beneath them a crypt in the form of an oratory — a room to be used, not merely a burial vault.

The wall surface is articulated the Lombard way. A web of blind arches separated by thin pilaster strips, paired on the facade and in the major apse. That doubling is the detail to look for: it is what gives the apse its rhythm.

And set into that apse are bowls. Outside the central apse, between the arches and the pitch of the roof, are ceramic bacini in coloured ceramic used as decorative inserts, of Sicilian or North African provenance — imported glazed ware mortared into a Ligurian wall.

The tombs on the left side are banded. There is a double arcosolium tomb and a single one, all with pointed arches supported by columns. The single tomb's arch is built of alternating white and black stones, in typical Ligurian style — as is the pronaos over the side entrance.

Inside, three things are worth the trip. On the high altar a wooden crucifix of the second half of the thirteenth century, similar to the Volto Santo of Lucca; a wooden cathedra of the thirteenth century; and fine frescoes of the Trecento. (Borghi più belli d'Italia instead calls the crucifix a twelfth-century Byzantine work known as the Volto Santo.)

Ceramic bacini from Sicily or North Africa

The single most unexpected thing here. Glazed coloured bowls were set into the outside of the central apse, between the blind arcading and the roof pitch, as decorative inserts. They are imported ware, and they make the apse a trade document.

An oratory crypt

The crypt is laid out ad oratorio — as a chapel rather than a simple undercroft, which is why it counts among the things to see rather than among the foundations.

Arcosolium tombs in black and white

On the left flank, one double and one single arched tomb, all with pointed arches on columns. The single one alternates white and black stone in its arch — the Ligurian banding also used on the side pronaos.

A crucifix measured against Lucca

The wooden crucifix on the high altar is dated to the second half of the thirteenth century and described as similar to the Volto Santo di Lucca, the most famous crucifix of its type in Italy.

A thirteenth-century wooden cathedra

A bishop's throne in wood, surviving from the centuries when this building was the cathedral of Noli and of its own diocese.

A necropolis under the floor

Excavations by the Istituto internazionale di studi liguri under Nino Lamboglia in 1972 found remains of an ancient necropolis beneath the church. Noli's own record describes the campaign as running 1970 to 1975 and adds two stone sarcophagi in Finale stone and an octagonal baptismal basin datable between the sixth and seventh century.

Restored by the man who restored Genoa's Romanesque

After earthquake damage the church was restored at the end of the nineteenth century by Alfredo d'Andrade, who brought back to light its original appearance.