This church does not know when it became a parish, and the reason is a war. The historic parish registers were destroyed in the mid eighteenth century, during the fighting of the War of the Austrian Succession, and with them went the institution's date of birth. All that is known is that it happened between the end of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century.
What to see
In the archiepiscopal register of 1143 it appears as a chapel dependent on the pieve of Sant'Olcese. It was then rebuilt from scratch between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the money of the Spinola family, one of the great Genoese houses. The front was frescoed in the seventeenth century.
Inside there is a single nave with five altars. The church was consecrated only at the end of the nineteenth century, in the same year it was raised to a provostship by the archbishop of Genoa. The patronal feast is celebrated with particular solemnity on the tenth of August, saint Lawrence's day.
Visiting
The church is in via Valente, in the hamlet of Orero, in the municipality of Serra Riccò, in the val Polcevera behind Genoa; it is a parish church and opens for services. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
Before raising your eyes to the front, look at the ground. The churchyard is paved in risseu, the Genoese cobbling made of white and black sea pebbles laid to a pattern, one by one, by hand. This one dates from 1909. It is a Ligurian trade that has hardly ever left the region, and it can only be admired by looking down.
