The bell tower of this church was probably a tower of the castle. It is a frequent and very practical reuse: the tower is already there, it is tall, it is solid, and when the castle stops being useful the parish takes it and puts the bells in it. Military power ends, and what is left of its architecture passes to whoever has stayed.
What to see
The church of Carpena is already named in the second half of the fifteenth century among those depending on the pieve of Marinasco. The present building was put up around 1760 in place of an earlier one, in all likelihood the castle's church. Beside it stand the presbytery and the bell tower.
Inside there is a main nave and a half nave on the left, held up by three sandstone columns, with baroque decoration; there is an eighteenth-century organ, the nineteenth-century font and a canvas of the Assumption painted in 1928 by Antonio Parisini. The hamlets of Codeglia and Castè also depend on the parish, the latter with an oratory of the late eighteenth century.
Visiting
The church is in the hamlet of Carpena, on the heights between Riccò del Golfo and La Spezia; it is a parish church and opens for services. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
Go up to the canvas of the Assumption and read the names written on it: they are those of the people who paid for it. It is a custom that today looks naive and was instead a contract: the parish received the picture, the families received the right to be in there for ever. A list of village surnames, painted so it would last.