What survives of the old church is mainly the tower: a fourteenth-century spired bell tower in Romanesque forms, standing beside the parish church of San Giovanni Battista at Bardino Vecchio like a piece that outlived everything around it. The church itself was reworked in modern times and now looks far more recent than its campanile, which still marks the outline of the hamlet when you look up from the valley floor.
What to see
The contrast between the two parts is the reason to stop: masonry, spire and openings of the tower belong to the fourteenth century, while the church next to it is the product of later work, with volumes and surfaces that make no attempt to imitate the old.
Bardino Vecchio was an independent municipality until 1928, when the royal decree of 6 December merged it and Bardino Nuovo into Tovo San Giacomo. San Giovanni Battista was the parish church of that separate community, which is why a hamlet of a few dozen houses has a parish of its own and a bell tower of this size.
Visiting
The village sits at 233 metres, three kilometres above the main settlement. TPL bus line 86 gets you there, running from Pietra Ligure to Magliolo through both Bardini; by car, via Costino climbs to the provincial road 490, the old Melogno trunk road that leads to the pass and on into the Bormida valley. The church opens mainly for services: if you find it locked, the bell tower reads perfectly well from the street, and it is the part that matters.
Our editors' tip
A few steps away stand the eighteenth-century sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie and the oratory of San Carlo Borromeo. But the thing to look for in Bardino Vecchio is the monument to the Cristezzanti, the men who carry the wooden crucifixes in the processions: it is the first and only one in the world dedicated to them, and it says more about Holy Week here than any caption could.
