The name comes from a fall. Local tradition tells of a horseman who, riding along the road that passes the chapel, went over the edge into the ravine below and called on the Virgin: he came out unhurt, and from then on the chapel, originally dedicated to Saint Roch, has been known as the Madonna del Salto, Our Lady of the Leap. The first building dates from around 1640; what stands today is the 1874 reconstruction, in the Salto district of San Giovanni, a hamlet of Stella.
What to see
The plan is circular, an unusual choice for a roadside chapel, and the dome opens at its centre: light falls from above rather than through side windows. The building is medium-sized, closer to a wayside oratory than to a village church, and its present dress is nineteenth-century, laid over a seventeenth-century core.
In front of the façade stands a porch carried on four tufa columns, the detail you recognise from a distance while driving. The double dedication survives in the calendar: despite the change of patron, the feast of Saint Roch is still celebrated here.
Visiting
The chapel sits on provincial road 334 to Sassello, just before the turning for Varazze, on a winding stretch through the woods of the Savona hinterland. It is not a parish church and keeps no fixed hours: outside services and the patronal feast you look at it from the outside, and the exterior — porch, columns, drum of the dome — says almost everything anyway. The apron in front is small and the road carries lorries: pull over carefully and never stop on a bend.
Our editors' tip
Walk to the downhill side, where the ground drops away without warning: that is the leap of the story, and seeing it explains the legend better than any caption. Then go up to San Giovanni, the old centre of Stella: the parish church of San Giovanni Battista and the castle ruins on the knoll behind the cemetery are minutes away, and together with the chapel they fill half a day.