They call it «la saracena», the Saracen one. It is a Romanesque church that arose, according to the studies, in the medieval period, when Fontanarossa was held in fief by the Malaspina, and it stands apart, by the hamlet's cemetery.
What to see
It is a small, old building of the kind put up in these valleys before the baroque arrived to rebuild everything. Its value lies in having stayed as it was: when the community moved down towards the centre of Fontanarossa and built the new parish church of the Addolorata, Santo Stefano lost its role, and with the role also the reasons for being modernised.
Visiting
A register of the diocese of Tortona names it as early as 1523: the Eccl. S. Stephani de Fontana Rubea was then in the care of the curate Stephanum Campis. Earlier still it depended on the pieve of San Giovanni Evangelista at Rovegno, the mother church of this whole stretch of valley. From the centre of the hamlet it is a few minutes on foot.
Our editors' tip
The detour is worth it above all if you have already seen the Addolorata: the two churches are close together and tell two moments of the same community, the one that lived up here and the one that came down.