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Chiesa parrocchiale di San Lorenzo, Varigotti

Chiesa parrocchiale di San Lorenzo, Varigotti historical timeline

Last updated on October 19, 2026

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This church is the second half of a move. For centuries Varigotti's parish was the old San Lorenzo on the promontory, built above a harbour that silted; as the village resettled on the western side of Punta Crena, the distance became impossible and a church was built where the people now were. What stands on the Aurelia today is that replacement, rebuilt in the Baroque century and still carrying the Gothic tower of its own first version. The old church is visible from it, up on the hill.

Chronology

1200s-1300s The population moves from the harbour area to the ground west of the Punta Crena promontory, where Varigotti stands today, and a new church of San Lorenzo is constituted for it, affiliated to the Pieve finalese — the old church above the port being by then far from the settlement.
1356 The first citations of the church date from this year. They are also the first notice of any church at Varigotti since the twelfth century, the record being silent in between.
1578 An original church is built, finished in 1585, which later becomes the canonica — the priest's house. The record attaches the present bell tower to this building, though elsewhere it attributes the tower to the church first cited in 1356.
1584 The polyptych of San Lorenzo is commissioned by the provost Pietro Averio with the massari Giorgio Mendari and Battista Mauri, whose names are written into its cartouche. It is still in the church.
1624 The present parish church is begun, and completed in 1637, to the design of the architect Andrea Storace. Its single nave, domed side chapel and banded facade are this campaign's, and they are what a visitor walks into.
17th c. Deep interventions through the century give the church its Baroque character, and a canvas of the Madonna del Rosario of this date is among the works it keeps.
1954 The polyptych is restored. It is the first conservation work on record here, and it is on the oldest dated object in the building.
2021 The polyptych is restored again. Two restorations in seventy years on one panel is a measure of how much of the church's value is concentrated in it.

What came with it and what stayed behind

The move from the promontory was not a clean replacement. The late Gothic bell tower came across — or rather stayed, since the new church was built around it — and it is the one piece of pre-Baroque fabric on the site. The old San Lorenzo did not come at all: it lost the parish, served as the cemetery chapel until the seventeenth century, took a bomb in the Second World War and was restored from 1995 with materials lifted by helicopter. Varigotti's monuments record dates the handover to 1586, which would place it between the 1578-1585 building and the 1624 one. The oratorio di Sant'Antonio Abate was added beside the new church, a few metres from the beach, and holds its confraternity; the painting it once carried above its entrance is completely erased. Nothing read for this page records war damage or structural failure to the parish church itself — the losses here are all on the hill.

Verified against Wikipedia, October 2026.

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Wikipedia

Sources & verification Covers the sourced claims on this page.

Checked against Wikipedia — The church of San Lorenzo is a religious building on the strada statale 1 Via Aurelia in the rione of Varigotti at Finale Ligure, in the province of Savona; it is the seat of the parish community of the same name of the vicariate of Finale Ligure-Noli of the diocese of Savona-Noli. The first citations date from 1356, and of the original building only the late Gothic bell tower remains visible, although remodelled in later periods; the present bell tower belongs to the original church of 1578-1585, which then became the canonica. The present structure is of a single nave with a chapel set against the left side and surmounted by a dome. The characteristics are those of the Baroque style, the church having been the object of deep interventions during the seventeenth century: the parish church of San Lorenzo visible today was built between 1624 and 1637 by the architect Andrea Storace. The external facade has simple lines and is decorated with bicoloured horizontal bands in typical Ligurian style. Inside are conserved some works of note, such as a polyptych of San Lorenzo of 1584, a wooden tabernacle of the sixteenth century, a seventeenth-century canvas of the Madonna del Rosario, and a triptych of the Virgin with San Lorenzo and Sant'Antonio., The whole Finale coast became part first of the Aleramic march and then of the territories of Bonifacio Del Vasto. In 1127 the Cistercian monks of the Abbey of Lerins settled in the church of San Lorenzo, a pre-existing monastic cenacle probably dating from the seventh century. In 1162 the march of Savona was constituted, enfeoffed to Enrico Del Carretto, of which Varigotti was a part often contested by the nascent comune of Noli. The monks of Lerins remained until 1177, when the church probably became the parish church of Varigotti -- there being in fact no news of the church until 1356. Varigotti took on importance and prosperity again thanks to the ancient port, which became an important base of maritime defence and attack for the Del Carretto. Meanwhile the population began to move from the port area to the area west of the promontory, where the settlement stands today; here a "compagna" was formed, a free association of the men of the villages with corporate power. At the same time a new church of San Lorenzo was constituted to the west, affiliated to the Pieve finalese, the old San Lorenzo above the port being by then far from the settlement. Given this westward shift, the inhabited nuclei of Pino, Giardino, Chien, Ca dei Mori, la Seva and la Monda were formed and the settlement developed along the coastal strip., Among the civil monuments of Varigotti: the promontory of Punta Crena, characterised by a centuries-old olive grove overlooking the sea, preserves an ancient Saracen watchtower built in 1559, and beside it are the remains of a convent; the ruins of the Byzantine castrum, dating from the Byzantine era and destroyed by Rotari; and the mole, named after the film director Renato Castellani. Among the religious monuments: the parish church of San Lorenzo, of Baroque forms with a late Gothic bell tower; the church of San Lorenzo overlooking the baia dei Saraceni, of very ancient origins, which was the first parish church of Varigotti until 1586; and the oratorio di Sant'Antonio Abate in the rione of Varigotti. Varigotti is a renowned tourist destination; the greatest flow of holidaymakers is registered in the summer period., The church of San Lorenzo rises halfway up the slope on the promontory at Punta Crena, dominating the so-called Baia dei Saraceni, natural port of the rione of Varigotti at Finale Ligure. The church is of a single nave with a square apse lit by single-light windows and a more recent part -- the wall towards the sea -- on which two doors in Gothic style open; the brick cross-vault of the sacristy also dates from the same period, the fourteenth century. The wall on the upslope side should instead be earlier than the year 1000. No longer a parish, the old church was later used as the chapel of the cemetery until the seventeenth century. The church was the target of a bomb during the Second World War, which damaged its roof, left broken open for many years. From 1995 the building was the object of restoration works, the first in Liguria in which a helicopter was used to lift the materials. The numerous finds of imperial and early medieval date recovered in the area of the ancient church, among them a sarcophagus of the third or fourth century, are today conserved at the archaeological museum of Finale, housed in the rooms of the ancient conventual complex of Santa Caterina at Finalborgo., The oratorio di Sant'Antonio abate is a religious building on the strada statale 1 Via Aurelia in the rione of Varigotti at Finale Ligure, in the province of Savona. The oratory stands beside the parish church of San Lorenzo, a few metres from the beach. The building is of a single nave with a barrel vault. The facade, lightened by three large windows, has simple lines like those of the parish church, and bore a painting above the entrance, by now completely erased. The oratory is the seat of the confraternity of the same name. (October 2026).

Chiesa parrocchiale di San Lorenzo, Varigotti historical timeline

Chronology

What came with it and what stayed behind

External resources

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