The patron of Pietra Ligure is Saint Nicholas of Bari, whose day is 6 December, but the town's greatest occasion is another: the feast of the miracle of Saint Nicholas, celebrated since 1525.
That year the plague had decimated the people of Pietra. The survivors closed the eight gates in the walls, put the keys into the hands of an old wooden icon of the saint of Myra — painted by the Genoese Giovanni Barbagelata — and abandoned the town, taking refuge up the hill in roughly built huts: the area is still called Baracchini. On the morning of 8 July the bells of the old parish church rang out in celebration. Astonished, since the town was deserted, the inhabitants came back and saw on the tower an old man in pontifical vestments; climbing to the belfry, they found on the great bell the print of a hand, which tradition says is that of Saint Nicholas. The icon is kept today in the basilica, built as a vow for deliverance from the plague to a design by Giovanni Battista Montaldo.
