The sanctuary of the Madonna dei Colombi was built twice. The original building is eighteenth-century and had an elliptical plan, unusual in these parts; today it is in ruins. What brought it down was the Diano Marina earthquake of 1887, the one that shook the whole western riviera.
What to see
In 1904, a few years after the disaster, the structure was rebuilt in baroque style, and the feature that marks it is its loggia. The comparison between the two buildings — the ruined elliptical one and the rebuilt one — is the most interesting thing here, because it shows how people rebuilt in the mountains after an earthquake: not as it was, but as they could.
Visiting
You come up from the village, which lies on the slopes of Monte Frontè inside the Ligurian Alps nature park. This is the area of the high hamlets, where the settlements were summer pastures for shepherds, and the sanctuary should be seen within that landscape: a place of devotion serving people who went up in summer and came down in autumn.
Our editors' tip
Come in August, when Mendatica holds its cucina bianca festival: that is when the village fills up and when these high places recover the meaning they used to have.
