In 1584 the apostolic visitor Angelo Peruzzi climbed up to Ponzano Superiore and put on record what he saw: a nave under a single vault, five side altars and the high altar. It is the oldest detailed description we have of the church of San Michele Arcangelo, mentioned in documents as early as the 13th century as a dependency of the pieve of Santo Stefano di Cerreto down in the valley, and consecrated in 1528 by the bishop of Nebbio, an old Corsican diocese.
What to see
The eighteenth century rebuilt the church almost from scratch. The date that matters is 1723, when the Remedi marquises donated the building materials and paid for the labour; the church came out of that worksite with the shape it still has. In 1767 it was raised to the rank of archpriest's church, recognition of a role by then independent of the mother church in the valley. Then, in 1798, under Napoleonic rule, the French stripped it of its gold and silver: furnishings and decoration went, the architecture stayed.
Inside there are paintings that have never been attributed or catalogued: you look at them without a label and without a name underneath, which says a good deal about how little this church has been studied. There is also the organ of 1825, the work of Filippo Tronci, still kept by the parish. Otherwise what counts is the proportion of the building: the single hall described in the sixteenth century, the altars along the sides, the high altar at the end.
Visiting
The church stands on via San Michele, in the upper part of Ponzano Superiore, one of the hill hamlets of Santo Stefano di Magra: from the Magra plain it is a few minutes' drive uphill, but it is better to leave the car at the edge of the village, because inside the lanes are narrow and steep. It is an active parish church in the Sarzana vicariate of the diocese of La Spezia-Sarzana-Brugnato, and like every village parish it lives by service times: outside Mass it may well be locked, and there is no custodian on duty.
Our editors' tip
We suggest pairing it with the pieve di Santo Stefano in piazza Chiesa, in the main town: that was the mother church on which San Michele depended, and seeing the two half an hour apart makes concrete a hierarchy that stays abstract on paper. Then, if you find the door open, stop in front of the unattributed paintings: it is rare to look at old pictures without a label having already decided what to think of them.