The pulpit is slate and carries the date 1503: carved into it are a Nativity and a group of Franciscan friars. It is by far the oldest thing in the church, two centuries older than the building that now houses it. Santa Maria Immacolata, formerly the Capuchin church of Alassio, was born from a vow the townspeople made to the Madonna after a pirate raid on the coast. The Capuchin friary built next door forced an enlargement in the early seventeenth century; the structure standing today, however, dates from the eighteenth and keeps the plain layout of the Franciscan manner.
What to see
The altar is carved in walnut and is seventeenth-century work. The slate pulpit is the piece worth stopping for: grey stone holds a carving better than wood, and the Nativity still reads in full, with the friars lined up beside the scene.
In the right aisle, set in a niche, is a painted wooden panel of the Madonna del Soccorso datable to 1573, a copy after the painter Macrino d'Alba. The church also keeps an ivory crucifix of the eighteenth century. Outside, on the square in front of the facade, a travertine basin holds a bronze statue of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Visiting
The church opens onto piazza San Francesco, beside what used to be the Capuchin friary. Entry is free, but hours follow the services and the door is not always open: to be sure of getting in, ask at the parish. The interior is small and there is no set route, so twenty minutes will do; the forecourt, with the basin and the bronze, is worth a few more.
Our editors' tip
We suggest bringing a small torch, or keeping your phone handy: the nave is dim and the relief in the slate only separates under a raking light that catches it from the side. It is the only way to really read the figures of 1503 and to see how much older they are than everything around them.