For two centuries this Ligurian church belonged to a Piedmontese abbey. Where the parish church stands today there was a Benedictine monastery, and in 1095 a bull of Urban the Second assigned its property to the Sacra di San Michele, in the Val di Susa: the lands of the Church knew no regional borders, and an abbot on a Piedmontese mountain collected the rents of a slope of the Ligurian Apennines.
What to see
The holding was confirmed again by three popes over a century and a half, and the survey of the abbey's goods reached as far as France and Spain. Then things changed: in 1258 a bull passed San Lorenzo to the basilica of the Fieschi at San Salvatore, right next door, and the church was raised to a priory.
The transfer was not by chance. One of the popes who had handled those lists was Innocent the Fourth, that is a Fieschi: the most powerful family of this valley. In a few decades the property moved from a distant abbey to the local house, which thus controlled both the lands and the churches of its territory.
Visiting
The church is in via Benedetto Chiappe, in the centre of Cogorno, above Chiavari; it is the parish church, so it opens for services. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
Go down to San Salvatore, a few hundred metres below, and look at the basilica of the Fieschi: a gothic church in bands of black and white, out of all proportion to the village around it. It is the monument a family builds itself when it gives a pope to the Church, and it explains the whole story you have just read.