The patron of Dolceacqua is Saint Anthony the Abbot, celebrated on 17 January in the parish church dedicated to him, in the town's oldest quarter, called Terra, at the foot of the Doria castle. The 15th-century church holds inside it the polyptych of Saint Devota, painted by Ludovico Brea in 1515.
The castle overlooking Terra was built from the 12th century onward by the counts of Ventimiglia, atop the rocky spur controlling the fork of the Nervia valley; between 1270 and 1276 the village passed to the Doria family, who bought a share of it through the Genoese captain of the people Oberto Doria, and under whose lordship the town expanded over the following centuries to its present-day shape. In 1526 it was Bartolomeo Doria who ceded his feudal rights over Dolceacqua to Charles II of Savoy.
