Drivers on the A10 motorway towards Ventimiglia catch it for a second from the viaduct over the Merula stream: a grey stone church and a square tower on a hill, above the ruins of the thirteenth-century castle of Andora. It is worth taking the exit. The church of Santi Giacomo e Filippo was built in the second half of the thirteenth century from Capo Mele stone, the same used for the tower beside it, and counts as one of the finest examples of late Romanesque architecture in western Liguria.
What to see
The plan is basilican: three naves and three apses, round carved columns carrying the pointed arches. What you see today is not the original shape but the result of the fourteenth-century enlargement, which gave the building its present Romanesque-Gothic look; in 1903 the architect Alfredo d'Andrade worked on it, the same man who restored dozens of medieval monuments in north-western Italy. The façade has a round-arched portal surmounted by a central mullioned window.
Next to the church stands the gate-tower in bare stone, with Ghibelline swallowtail merlons: it was the northern entrance to the fortified village under Genoese rule and now serves as the church's bell tower, with which it is almost certainly contemporary. Inside the tower a fragment of an old fresco survives. The ensemble — church, tower, castle ruins — explains on its own why the hamlet is simply called Castello.
Visiting
The Castello hamlet sits on the hill above the Merula valley, behind the seafront of Andora: you drive up from the valley floor in a few minutes and the last stretch is an easy walk. The church is not the parish church of the town and is not always open: the best chances are services and above all the classical music season held here every summer, with concerts inside the three naves.
Our editors' tip
If you can, come for one of the summer concerts: hearing chamber music under pointed arches raised in the thirteenth century repays the climb on its own, and on those evenings the hamlet comes alive as it does at no other time of year. Otherwise aim for sunset: the Merula valley darkens before the sea does, the tower stays lit longer, and the motorway traffic below shrinks to a distant noise.
