The patron saint of Maissana is Saint Bartholomew, celebrated on 24 August, in the parish church dedicated to him in the main town, built in 1582: the coloured-marble high altar is from 1771, while the bell tower dates from 1754. The hamlets of Chiama and Tavarone also have their own church of San Bartolomeo: that of Chiama was the only community in Maissana's territory to belong to the diocese of Brugnato rather than the archdiocese of Genoa, while that of Tavarone, from the 17th century, replaced an earlier church dedicated to San Siro and preserves a 1715 wooden choir.
The ownership of the Maissana fief passed to the Fieschi, counts of Lavagna, who built a castle at Lagorara: the territory followed the family's fortunes until 1547, when, after the famous conspiracy of Gianluigi Fieschi, the properties passed to the Doria and then to the Republic of Genoa. In the hamlet of Santa Maria di Lagorara, the 13th-century church of Santa Maria Assunta houses in its bell tower the largest bell concert in the Val di Vara, made up of six bronze bells, the largest of which weighs about 15 quintals. Not far away, the Valle Lagorara archaeological site, studied by the Ligurian Archaeological Superintendency between 1988 and 1995, brought to light a large open-air jasper mine, worked by prehistoric humans, with two main extraction areas and remains of shelters and tools.
