In the restorations of the 1980s and 1990s, workers taking apart the base of the high altar found a monolithic sarcophagus in white marble, datable to the early Middle Ages. The find confirmed what the masonry already suggested: the church of Santa Maria, in the village of Vezzano Inferiore, stands on something far older than itself. In the twelfth century it was rebuilt in Romanesque form, as a single hall, over the remains of an early medieval place of worship still visible around the presbytery. First served by canons regular, it was the parish church of Vezzano Basso until the Romanesque building fell into decay and the title moved to the church of Santi Sebastiano e Maria Assunta.
What to see
The stone facade is the best thing here: a gabled front, an arched doorway and, above it, a lunette that once held a fresco, now lost. Higher up opens a deep two-light window, and at the apex a cross cut in negative into the masonry. Nothing else was added, and that is exactly why it works.
A second nave was added on the left side in the fifteenth century, with a facade of its own: a sloping roofline, a plain portal, a strongly splayed oculus. Two churches side by side, built three centuries apart. In 1599 the diocese of Luni raised Santa Maria to a perpetual vicarage. The medieval bell tower, squat and square in plan, was rebuilt in Baroque form in 1708, when the complex was already showing signs of decline.
Visiting
Santa Maria stands in via Santa Maria, in Vezzano Inferiore, the lower part of the municipality, on the route between La Spezia and the Val di Magra. It is not a museum and keeps no continuous opening hours: outside service times you may find the door locked, so it is worth asking at the parish, in piazza del Popolo. The interior is plain, with no major decorative apparatus: what you look at is the masonry itself, the Romanesque hall and the presbytery, where the earliest phase comes to the surface. A study conference held in the church on 26 October 1996 reconstructed its history, and the published proceedings remain the reference for anyone who wants to go further.
Our editors' tip
We suggest giving the forecourt five minutes before you go in: the Romanesque facade and the fifteenth-century one stand next to each other, and comparing the two kinds of stone, in cut and in colour, tells you more than any panel. Then move on to the parish church of Santi Sebastiano e Maria Assunta, in piazza del Popolo: it inherited the sixteenth-century font and the title of Santa Maria Assunta from here, and the two buildings make more sense seen one after the other.