The patroness of Rocchetta di Vara is Saint Justine, celebrated on the last Sunday of September. The parish church dedicated to her, in the main village, dates from the 16th century and is built on the foundations of the old chapel of San Pantaleone: it holds inside a statue of the titular saint.
Already a settlement of monastic origin, from 1113, with the founding of the diocese of Brugnato, the territory was included in the holdings of the Brugnato episcopal power, which together with the village of Suvero made Rocchetta an effective defensive outpost against the dominion of the bishops of Luni. In medieval times the villages of Rocchetta and Suvero became the property of the Obertenghi, then of the Este family, and finally of the Villafranca branch of the Malaspina family: between 1407 and 1416 the fief was administered by Gabriele Malaspina, killed precisely that year in a revenge attack by Battista Fregoso, brother of the Doge of Genoa Tomaso Fregoso. The castle of Suvero, built by the Malaspina in the 14th century, was enlarged and renovated in 1549 by Marquis Rinaldo Malaspina, who received its investiture as lord of the fief; a notarial deed of 22 June 1500 had already established the division of the territory between the brothers Tommaso and Giovanni Malaspina, with Rocchetta ceded to the former and Suvero to the latter. The feudal property remained with the Malaspina of Villafranca until 1797, when the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte led to the suppression of imperial fiefs; abandoned by its owners, the castle has been restored in recent times, for the third time in its long history, and today serves as a private residence.
