In the papers of this hamlet you can watch a church die. A notarial act of 1230 names, close by, a church dedicated to the apostle Thomas; three years later another act rules that a single parish priest shall hold the benefice of that one and of this; from a document of 1260 onwards San Tommaso appears no more. Thirty years, three lines, a building gone.
What to see
The church that remains is that of Sant'Antonino martyr, in via degli Ulivi, in the village of Breccanecca. The village and its religious community depended from Lombard times on a monastic priory in the neighbouring valley, then from the end of the fifteenth century passed under the parish of Cogorno.
Independence came only in the nineteenth century, when Breccanecca became an autonomous rectory again; in the early twentieth it was raised to a provostship and reconsecrated by the bishop of Chiavari. These are bureaucratic steps, but for a hill hamlet they meant having its own priest, its own registers and its own funerals without going down to the valley.
Visiting
The church is in the hamlet of Breccanecca, on the heights above Chiavari; it is a parish church, so it opens for services. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
From the forecourt look at the opposite slope and pick out the bell towers of the other villages: you will see nearly all of them at the same height, in a band above the valley floor and below the woods. It is the belt of the olive terraces and the mule tracks, the only altitude at which people could live in Liguria. Villages are not scattered at random, they are lined up.