The oldest part of this church is the bell tower, and to be precise its lower part: there you can glimpse the traces of the medieval building it all started from. The rest was rotated in orientation, enlarged and remade, and its present look is the one given to it by works in the first half of the nineteenth century.
What to see
It happens often, and it is almost always the bell tower that survives: putting up a new one costs a great deal, it has to be tall and it has to be straight, and as long as it stands nobody touches it. So while the church changes century and direction, the tower stays put and becomes the one piece that keeps the building's real age.
This is the parish church of Feglino, the chief settlement of the scattered municipality of Orco Feglino, in the hinterland of Finale Ligure. We are in one of the most famous stone districts of Liguria, the Finalese, where the pale limestone provided the material to build half the coast and where the rock faces are frequented today by climbers.
Visiting
The church is in the centre of Feglino, a few kilometres from Finale Ligure up the valley; it is a parish church and opens for services. A quarter of an hour.
Our editors' tip
From here, a few kilometres away, you can walk in the val Ponci, where the bridges of a Roman consular road survive: squared stone, arches still standing, in the middle of the wood. It is a short and easy walk, and it puts the church in its true context, that is a valley that has been crossed for two thousand years.