For generations the collegiate church of Finale Marina was credited to Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Scholarship dismantled the attribution and gave the building back to local masters who worked in that manner. The site opened in 1619 and work went on for fifty-five years: the fabric was declared complete in 1674 and solemnly consecrated in 1675, while the Baroque front was reworked in 1762 by the Finale architect Nicola Barella. In April 1930 Pius XI granted it the rank of minor basilica.
What to see
On the facade Bartolomeo Bagutti carved John the Baptist, Saints Peter and Paul, Hope and Faith. The dome, twenty-four metres high, was raised in 1780 by Giuseppe Barella with the Genoese Simone Cantoni and Emanuele Andrea Tagliafichi. The interior is the largest in the diocese of Savona-Noli: three naves divided by two rows of paired columns, an open quotation of Genoese models from the early seventeenth century.
On the inner facade the three frescoes of 1808 are by Paolo Gerolamo Brusco: the Baptism of Christ, the preaching on the banks of the Jordan, the Glory of the Precursor. The presbytery vault is his as well. The central nave was decorated in 1830 by Giuseppe Passano with scenes from the life of the Baptist among ranks of angels, and the twelve chapels carry the hand of Giacomo Picco. In the transept the Glory of Saint Nicholas of Bari is by Giovanni Battista Merano, who had frescoed the vault in 1693; the high altar in coloured marbles, of the Genoese school, dates from 1767. The fourth chapel on the left holds the crucifix of Anton Maria Maragliano and sculptures by Antonio Brilla.
Visiting
The church stands on via Giuseppe Garibaldi, in the Finale Marina quarter, a few dozen metres from the seafront. It is a working parish, so opening follows the services: mornings and late afternoons are the safest bets, and on weekdays you will often have the aisles to yourself. On the gallery to the right is the organ built in 1904 by Cesare Bernasconi and his son Giovanni, restored in 2002; the sacristy keeps further canvases of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Our editors' tip
Ask to step into the sacristy for the canvas of Saints Erasmus and Nicholas: along the bottom the painter set a view of Finale Marina and its hinterland as they looked in the seventeenth century, and it is the oddest document in the whole church. Before leaving, stand under the gallery and look at the organ case, twenty-five principal pipes topped by a false curtain carved in wood.