The organ inside, made at the end of the 18th century, was not built for this stretch of farmland: it came from the basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan and ended up in a church on the plain, at Pian Cavatorio, next to the cemetery of Villanova d'Albenga. The building is far older than the instrument. It went up in the 12th century in Romanesque form and was reworked several times afterwards, so today it reads in layers, like a text rewritten by different hands.
What to see
The bell tower has held up best: a spire-capped tower set against the flank of the church, lightened by 13th-century mullioned windows. Inside, the space is divided into three naves, the measure of a church that served a community scattered across the plain rather than a single family.
On the walls are frescoes from the 15th and 16th centuries devoted to the Passion of Christ: the Ecce Homo, the Ascent to Calvary, the Crucifixion. It is worth taking them one after another, in the order of the story: these are episodes meant for people who brought no book to church, and the sequence counts as much as the single figures.
Visiting
You are not inside the walled centre of Villanova but out on the flat: take the strada statale 453 through the Valle Arroscia, the road linking Albenga to Ortovero, and carry on to the cemetery at Pian Cavatorio. The church belongs to the diocese of Albenga-Imperia and is not open all day, so it pays to ask at the parish or to aim for a service; anyone arriving unannounced can still read the outside, with the bell tower and the Romanesque masonry left below the later work.
Our editors' tip
We put it at the end of the round, not the start. First the village of Villanova, with its walls, its ten towers, its two gates and the medieval well in the middle; then the drop down to Pian Cavatorio, which makes sense of the link between the fortified town and the churches scattered across the farmed plain. And if you happen to find the organ being played, stay and listen: an instrument that came out of Sant'Ambrogio is not an ordinary thing to hear.