In 1877, while the walls and roof of Cogoleto's new parish church were going up, the old church was still standing inside the building site: smaller, with three naves, 35 metres long and 14 high, it ended up literally enclosed by the building meant to replace it, and was pulled down only on 2 June 1878. A church at Cogoleto is documented as early as the twelfth century — a papal tax record mentions a censum olei de Codoleto — and the wills of Sister Aiguina, of 1308, and of Leonetta di Negro, of 1312, name it for bequests and burials. The parish was consecrated on 11 April 1554; the nineteenth-century design is by the architect Maurizio Dufour, who signed it without taking a fee, backed by the marquis Marcello Durazzo and the archpriest Scarrone.
What to see
The central chapel on the right keeps the altar that in 1500 the brothers Antonio and Giovanni Colombo, of the same family as Christopher Columbus, gave to the church, obtaining its patronage in return; it later passed to the Ansaldo of Genoa, owners of paper mills and lime quarries, who in 1603, with the consent of the bishop of Savona during a pastoral visit, commissioned Giovanni Carlone to paint the Preaching of Saint John the Baptist. In the canvas, restored in 2019, the patrons had themselves portrayed.
On the left side come the Death of Saint Joseph with Saints Anthony of Padua and Mary Magdalene, signed in 1642 by Orazio De Ferrari and made legible again by the 2014 restoration, and an early seventeenth-century Crucifixion above the tabernacle. In the baptistery a Madonna of the Apocalypse is attributed to Anton Maria Maragliano; the vault was painted by Raffaele Albertella in 1939, while the Coronation of the Virgin in the apse basin was ordered from Luigi De Servi by the Ghigliotti family.
Visiting
The church stands in piazza della Chiesa, in the centre of Cogoleto, and is the town's parish church: it belongs to the diocese of Savona-Noli and opening times follow those of services. Two inscriptions on the outside walls recall the old castle and the town's links with the Colombo family. Until 1837, with no cemetery available, people were buried inside: which is why so many medieval bequests speak of masses and tombs. Five bells recast in 1986 hang in the tower; the pipe organ, built in 1932 by the Pacifico Inzoli firm with tubular-pneumatic action, was restored in 2015.
Our editors' tip
We suggest spending a few minutes in front of Carlone's canvas and looking, among the figures, for the faces of the Ansaldo: it is the portrait of a family of limestone entrepreneurs who bought a place in church and put themselves inside it. Then look at the Colombo altar, which survived demolition because the builders were told to reinstate it in the new church.