Cosmas and Damian are the physician saints, the ones invoked for healing, and their sanctuary stands on a hill a little above a thousand metres, which is to say on a pass. That has always been the way between the Arroscia valley, and thus Albenga, and the Piedmont side: two worlds meeting at the top, and that is where they put the church you ask for health.
What to see
The building is of the nineteenth century and was raised on a votive pillar of the seventeenth that already stood there. The devotion is deeply felt in three different valleys: the Arroscia, the Pennavaira and the upper Tanaro. It is not a village sanctuary, it is a crossroads sanctuary.
The peculiarity of the place are the loggias, covered galleries running round the building. At the end of the nineteen-fifties, at the will of the local archpriest, they were modernised and a pilgrims' house was built as well: reception buildings, because you do not climb up here for half an hour.
Visiting
The sanctuary is on the colle di San Cosimo, above the hamlet of Gavenola, municipality of Borghetto d'Arroscia; you get there by mountain road, and the crowds gather on the feast days. Half a day.
Our editors' tip
The loggias are not an ornament: they are lodging. A sanctuary feast on a pass lasted more than a day, and those who came from the other side had walked for hours and could not go back the same evening. They slept there, under those galleries. Look at them thinking of an August night with people lying on the ground, and it becomes another building entirely.
