On a stormy night in 1895 lightning struck the gallery and shattered the organ that Antonio Bianchi of Rapallo had built in 1857 and that his son Camillo had restored in 1874: the parish registers record it. That damage set off the work of the following year, when the central nave was raised by two metres, the ceiling rebuilt and the facade reopened with new windows. The church itself is far older: it appears in a deed of 984, and tradition traces it to the eighth century, the years when the Milanese curia was stationed between Genoa and Liguria. The dedication to Ambrose, bishop of Milan, comes from that connection.
What to see
The ceiling is the surprise: between 1981 and 1987 Nicola Neonato frescoed the central nave, covering 200 square metres with more than 300 figures, and painted scenes from the life of Jesus in the apse basin. The bronze altar set in front of the old eighteenth-century marble one is his too, as are the three doors on the facade. Around them the older furnishings survive: the seventeenth-century wooden choir and the wooden statue of the Madonna del Rosario, an eighteenth-century work attributed to Anton Maria Maragliano.
On the right wall of the presbytery hangs a painting of the Madonna del Rosario with Pope Pius V and Saint Helena; more notable is the Madonna and Child with Saint Bernard, Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Stephen, which scholars give either to Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo or to Bernardo Strozzi. Outside, the bell tower went up in 1672 and kept growing: the bells, three of them from 1773, had reached twelve by 1982. The forecourt is a risseu, the Ligurian paving of black and white pebbles, designed by the architect Pietro Porcinai.
Visiting
The church stands at Sant'Ambrogio della Costa, the upper hamlet of Zoagli, on via Cornice Sant'Ambrogio, on the slope that drops towards the Tigullio. It is a working parish in the vicariate of Rapallo-Santa Margherita Ligure, in the diocese of Chiavari, so opening follows the pattern of services; outside those hours it is wise to call the parish house first. Inside it runs on three naves, the side ones added when the single original hall was no longer enough.
Our editors' tip
Before going in, stop on the forecourt and look down: Porcinai's risseu is a drawing made of black and white pebbles gathered on the beaches, and it reads best in low morning light. Then find a pew halfway up the nave and look up; the figures on the ceiling only separate out if you sit still for a few minutes. Come on a weekday, when the church is empty and the quiet helps.