Above the doorway of San Vincenzo in Ameglia, a marble relief shows the Virgin with the blessing Child between two saints; inside, in a niche, a marble triptych of 1527 signed by Domenico Gar lines up Saint Vincent, Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian beneath a lunette with the Annunciation. These two pieces tell the building's story better than anything else: an early medieval pieve, among the most important in the old diocese of Luni, rebuilt from scratch in the fifteenth century and rebuilt again in 1932.
What to see
The façade steps down on either side, following the roof-lines of the three naves, with a rose window at the centre: the plan of the interior is announced from the street. The presbytery is wide, out of scale with the village as it is today, a reminder that San Vincenzo was a pieve, the baptismal church for a far larger territory.
Besides Gar's triptych, the church keeps a painting of 1677 by Francesca Martelli Prandini showing the Madonna and Child with Saints Lawrence, the young John and Apollonia: a woman's signature from the seventeenth century, not a common thing in provincial churches. It is worth hunting for calmly, because it is not flagged as it deserves.
Visiting
San Vincenzo is a working parish church, seat of the parish of the same name in the vicariate of the Media Val di Magra, diocese of La Spezia-Sarzana-Brugnato: its hours follow the services, and outside them you may well find it locked. You reach it on foot from the old centre of Ameglia, which takes only a few minutes to cross; leave the car in the parking areas below, because the lanes of the village are very tight.
Our editors' tip
Come just before or after Sunday mass, while someone local is still about: it is the easiest way to get the light switched on over the triptych and to be told, with no signage involved, what the church looked like before the 1932 rebuilding. And before you go in, stand a minute on the forecourt in morning light: that is the hour when the relief above the doorway stops being a white blur and the faces come out.