A marble medallion of the risen Christ is set into the front of this oratory, and it did not come from a sculptor's workshop: it was pulled out of the sea off Camogli in 1932 and put up here. The building itself is far older. It went up in the fifteenth century, most probably in 1420, beside the stairway that climbs a short way from via della Repubblica, and it was enlarged in the eighteenth century, when almost every church along this coast took on its Baroque dress.
What to see
Inside, the decoration is the Baroque work of that eighteenth-century enlargement. In the middle of it survives a wooden crucifix from the fifteenth century, as old as the foundation and far more severe than everything around it: it is the one object that tells you what the oratory looked like before the rebuilding.
On the walls hang canvases of the Ligurian school painted in the eighteenth century, local work from exactly the years when the building was being reshaped. The medallion of the risen Christ, by contrast, is looked at from outside, before you go in: white marble against plaster, and knowing it was lifted out of the water in 1932 changes the way you read it.
Visiting
The oratory stands in the centre of Camogli, pressed against the stairway that climbs a few metres from via della Repubblica: from the seafront and from the railway station it is a few minutes on foot, all steps and narrow lanes. It keeps no museum hours and you may well find the door shut; in that case ask at the parish or come back around service times. The façade, in any case, can be seen from the street at any hour.
Our editors' tip
Climb the stairway to the top and then turn round: from up there the oratory is seen at an angle, with roofs and the sea behind it, and it is the only spot where it stops being a flat face on an alley. Then walk down to the little harbour and look at the boats, because that is where the medallion came from.
