The oldest church in Valleggia is not the one you see on arrival. The original Gothic building of the Santissimo Salvatore ended up inside the oratory of San Sebastiano, which stands on the far side of the square and faces the parish church head-on: rebuilt in 1771, it keeps the old masonry within its walls. The two buildings confront each other from opposite ends of the same open space, and they are the same place of worship in two different ages.
What to see
Inside, the parish church has a single nave, densely decorated, with four chapels opening along its flanks. The chapels hold wooden statues from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: altar and processional sculpture, the devotional stock a Ligurian parish assembled over two centuries.
Then it is worth stepping outside and turning round. It is in the oratory, under the plaster and the remodelling, that the Gothic fabric the parish grew from survives: the shift from one to the other is read by crossing the square, not by staying inside a single building.
Visiting
Valleggia is a hamlet of Quiliano, in the immediate hinterland between Savona and Vado Ligure, and the church is the seat of the parish of the same name, in the Savona vicariate of the diocese of Savona-Noli. This is not a monument with a ticket desk: it remains a working parish, and service times are the surest moment to find the doors open. The square in front of the facade is the only point from which church and oratory can be taken in at a single glance.
Our editors' tip
We suggest you do not stop at the threshold. Walk the few paces that separate the parish church from the oratory, stand in the middle of the square and look at the two facades one after the other: it is the quickest way to understand why the Santissimo Salvatore has two bodies and a single history. If time is short, give at least a few minutes to the wooden statues in the side chapels, which are the liveliest part of the whole.