Two iron rings are set into the right-hand side of the baroque façade: they came from the chain that closed off the harbour of Pisa, and a local man, Trancheo Stanco, brought them back to Moneglia in 1284 from the Meloria, the sea battle in which the Genoese fleet got the better of the Pisan one. A war trophy fixed to the wall of a parish church says by itself how much this stretch of coast counted in the contest between the two republics.
What to see
The present church, with a single nave, was built in 1725 on the remains of the earlier one, which had collapsed for reasons nobody ever established. The community, though, is far older: some scholars hold that the parish already existed in 1033, and in 1043 it became a pieve with a college of canons; other sources put the first church at 1130.
Inside, the third altar on the right holds a statue of the Immaculate Conception attributed to Anton Maria Maragliano; the fourth altar on the left brings together a Byzantine crucifix and a canvas of the Madonna delle Grazie. The sacristy keeps a Last Supper by Luca Cambiaso, who was at home here: the house where he was born stands a few steps from the church.
Visiting
Santa Croce faces onto via Vittorio Emanuele, the street that runs through the centre of Moneglia. It is a working parish in the vicariate of Sestri Levante, diocese of Chiavari, so opening follows the times of services: outside them you may well find the door shut, and it is worth planning around that.
Our editors' tip
Our advice is not to go straight in. Stand for a few minutes on the right of the façade, level with the rings, and hold together the two ages the building lines up: a thirteenth-century trophy and an eighteenth-century interior, nearly five hundred years apart and attached to the same wall. Then walk the few steps to Cambiaso's birthplace: knowing the painter was born on this block changes the way you look at his canvas in the sacristy.