In 1600 a Genoese named Giovanni Tamburi gave a hundred and fifty lire to this church, and in exchange obtained the right to choose who its rector would be. Pope Clement the Eighth put it in writing, specifying that the right held even against the parishioners' opinion. Inside the church a large Latin plaque recalls his generosity.
What to see
A small church at Marsiglia is attested by two legacies of 1213. For centuries the community shared its rector with the neighbouring one of Sant'Andrea di Calvari, and in the fourteenth century a document describes it as ruinous and almost without parishioners. The definitive separation came only with the visit of the archbishop of Genoa at the end of the sixteenth century.
The building has a single nave with three altars; the bell tower was added in the mid seventeenth century. In 1797, during the French invasion, the presbytery was sacked and the soldiers set fire to the parish archive: which is why what is known about this church is what is written elsewhere, and not what was written here.
Visiting
The church is in via Marsiglia, in the municipality of Davagna, in the val Bisagno behind Genoa; it is a parish church and opens for services. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
Find the Latin plaque and read it knowing what it celebrates. It is a thank-you to a benefactor, written in the language that in the seventeenth century gave authority to everything, and at the same time it is the receipt of a sale: a community losing its say over its own priest, and losing it for a sum that fits on one line of an account book.