The parish church of Mendatica was consecrated in 1454, Romanesque and with three naves. In the eighteenth century it was the villagers themselves who pulled it down, in order to build it larger: of the old building they kept only the bell tower with its two-light windows, reworking the spire.
What to see
The church you see today has a single nave and is baroque, and its vaults hold an oddity: the frescoes portray people of the village of that time, real faces set inside the sacred scenes. Inside is a Madonna by Anton Maria Maragliano, the Genoese carver whose workshop supplied half of Liguria in the eighteenth century.
Visiting
It stands on piazza Roma, in the middle of the village, which stretches along the slope: in winter the sun leaves it by early afternoon, and this part of the built-up area is among the first to fall into shade. Rebuilding began in 1766 to a design by the master Domenico Belmonte of Gazzelli — the same name that appears at Testico for the octagonal hall of the parish church — and the estimated cost was around 12,000 lire.
Our editors' tip
Take your time over the vaults and look for the faces: they are the people of eighteenth-century Mendatica, and it is rare to find them painted inside a mountain parish church.