The patron saint of San Colombano Certenoli is Saint Columban, celebrated on 23 November, who gives his name to the municipality together with the hamlet of Certenoli, while the town hall is located in the hamlet of Aveggio. The territory is mentioned as early as the 10th century in some documents of the abbey of San Colombano di Bobbio, where it is explicitly named as a monastic cell under its first name, Bembelia, alongside other cells such as Scaona, Monte, Vinealis, Romalio and Plecherio: it later became a fief of the Fieschi counts of Lavagna from 1171.
The town preserves numerous historic churches in its hamlets, including that of Santa Maria Assunta at Certenoli, that of the Most Holy Trinity at Aveggio, built in the 19th century, and that of San Maurizio at Baranzuolo, whose construction is thought to date from 1762. With the new French administration, from 1798 San Colombano was part of the 4th canton of the Entella jurisdiction, and in 1805 it absorbed the hamlets of Celesia and Cichero from the municipality of Orero: the Ponte di Celesia still bears witness to this history today.
