This is a church you only find by walking into the neighbourhood: small, wedged between the other buildings of the San Francesco convent, facing a little square in the Sant'Anna quarter, with architectural and decorative details of neo-Gothic derivation. It was built between the end of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, in the same decades when Diano Marina was picking itself up after the earthquake and tsunami of 23 February 1887.
What to see
Neo-Gothic is an exception in Diano Marina. The other churches speak of other periods: the late Romanesque hall of Santi Nazario e Celso, in the archaeological area of Prato Fiorito; the oratory of the Santissima Annunziata beside the harbour, probably medieval in origin, with frescoes by Tommaso and Matteo Biazaci da Busca; the parish church of Sant'Antonio, rebuilt between 1862 and 1865 on the seafront. The Sacro Cuore belongs instead to the European taste of the end of the century, which put Gothic forms back into circulation.
The church is part of a convent complex and is served by the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Its small scale and the way it sits back among the buildings are part of its character: not a showpiece facing the sea, but a neighbourhood church, built for the people who grew up around it.
Visiting
We are in the town centre, on via Martino, a few minutes from the seafront and the station: the Genoa-Ventimiglia railway opened its stop here on 25 January 1872, and since then it has brought Diano Marina first an elite tourism and then the mass holidays of the fifties and sixties. The Sacro Cuore is a working place of worship with no museum hours: it is best to come close to service times, without visiting while they are under way. The little square in front is the only open space from which you can take in the whole facade.
Our editors' tip
We pair the visit with a walk to the Palazzo del Parco, a few blocks away: it houses the Angiolo Silvio Novaro civic library and the town museum, whose archaeological section displays finds gathered between Capo Berta and Capo Cervo, where the Roman station of Lucus Bormani once stood. And if you are in Diano Marina for Corpus Christi, look for the Infiorata: the first edition dates from 1963, and carpets of flower petals cover the streets of the old centre.