On 25 September 1900 the prior of the Discalced Carmelites in Arenzano, Father Giovanni della Croce, had a small framed picture hung beneath the statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: it showed the Infant Jesus of Prague, a devotion born in Bohemia, where the first image appeared in 1628, and brought here by Father Cirillo del Carmelo. Soon afterwards the picture gave way to a statue donated by Marchioness Delfina Gavotti of Savona and blessed on 2 June 1902. The rest moved fast: Pius X approved the confraternity of the Holy Infant Jesus of Prague, which set about raising money; the building site opened in 1904 to a design by the engineer Camogli in Italian Renaissance style, and by 1908 the church was finished. The sanctuary, founded in 1905, is the first in Italy dedicated to the Infant Jesus; a friary here had been proposed as early as the seventeenth century, to give pilgrims a base between the western Riviera and the friaries of Genoa, but it took almost three hundred years.
What to see
The church has a Latin-cross plan and its polychrome marble front opens around a large rose window. Out on the forecourt a marble column carries a gilded statue of the Child at the top: it recalls the solemn crowning of the wooden image, performed on 7 September 1924 by Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val with a crown blessed by Pius X. In 1928 Monsignor Giacomo De Amicis, auxiliary bishop of Genoa, consecrated the building, which holds the title of minor basilica.
Inside, the surfaces are faced with ceramics by Angelo Biancini and the walls are covered with ex-votos. Guido Galletti carved the statues of Saint Joseph and the Virgin; in a grotto beneath the sanctuary Eliseo Salino modelled a majolica nativity scene with the Marriage of the Virgin, the meeting with Saint Elizabeth, the Nativity and the childhood of Jesus beside Saint Joseph. The organ is a Mascioni opus 621 of 1947, enlarged in 1966 by the same firm and in 2016 by the Marin brothers: electric action, 47 stops over three manuals and pedal, 2803 pipes. Above the pipes, in the apse, hangs the painting Renzo Bonfiglio made in 1965, «Humanity in need at the feet of the Infant Jesus»: in the crowd you can pick out John XXIII, Doctor Schweitzer, the actor Gino Cervi and Brother Tarcisio, who did a great deal for the sanctuary.
Visiting
The sanctuary stands on a rise on via Guglielmo Marconi, just outside the centre of Arenzano, and from the forecourt the view runs over the town and the mountains behind it; the last stretch is uphill whichever way you come. The church belongs to the parish of Saints Nazarius and Celsus, in the vicariate of Pra'-Voltri-Arenzano, archdiocese of Genoa. The room you walk into is no longer the one of 1908: in 1962, faced with a growing flow of pilgrims, the Carmelites decided to enlarge it, and in 1966 two transepts were inserted between the apse and the nave. Cardinal Josef Beran, archbishop of Prague, attended the reopening.
Our editors' tip
We suggest starting from below: the grotto with Salino's nativity scene sits under the church and takes only a few minutes, but it tunes the eye for Biancini's ceramics upstairs. Then, at the far end, in front of Bonfiglio's canvas, take the time to hunt for the faces: finding Gino Cervi in the crush is the quickest way to grasp how recent, and how little like a museum, this place of worship is.