A painted calendar runs along the corbels that carry the roof truss of the church of San Giovanni Battista: the twelve months with men working the fields, and a series of saints, laid down in medieval colours. The wooden roof dates from the 15th century, and a heavy 19th-century restoration repainted much of it.
What to see
The church was built in Romanesque forms around the year 1000, at the northern edge of the village. It had three naves and three semicircular apses lit by small round-arched windows; in the 12th century the plan was simplified and the naves reduced to a single wide one, covered by the great wooden truss.
The most obvious wound, though, is from the 19th century: a wing and an apse were demolished to make way for the new carriage road, and the Romanesque plan has reached us incomplete. What remains are the arched windows, the stonework and above all the painted ceiling, which is the reason to stop: decorated corbels, saints, the cycle of the months and peasants bent over their work.
Visiting
The church stands at the northern end of the built-up area, a few minutes on foot from the rest of the old centre. Diano Castello sits on a hill above the plain that drops towards Diano Marina and Cervo, and from the coast you climb on the provincial road 37, the one linking Diano Marina with Diano Arentino; after that you walk. As with the other churches in the village, no opening times are published: if you find it shut, ask at the parish.
Our editors' tip
Take your time with the ceiling and, if you can, bring binoculars or use the zoom on your phone: the corbels are high up and the scenes of the months only separate out when enlarged. Then compare this single nave with the Romanesque apse of Santa Maria Assunta a few steps away: two different outcomes of the same way of building, in the same village.
