Cattedrale di San Lorenzo

At the end of the lane that climbs from Piazza de Ferrari, the grey-and-white marble front of San Lorenzo fills the view. Genoa's cathedral holds a crusade trophy once called the Holy Grail, a treasury in its crypt and, inside the nave, a replica of an unexploded naval shell from the bombardment of 1941.

Why it matters

San Lorenzo’s architectural history is closely connected with the fortunes of the Republic of Genoa. Building of the present church began around 1098 over an earlier palaeo-Christian basilica; the site had already been the city's cathedral since the ninth century, when it replaced the basilica of the Twelve Apostles dedicated to Saint Syrus. The cathedral was consecrated in 1118, with the Romanesque structure financed by communal taxes and the profits of crusading ventures — Genoa's fleets were then ferrying the Holy Land campaigns. From 1133 the church held archiepiscopal rank, and the ashes of Saint John the Baptist, Genoa's patron, were said to have arrived with the return of the first crusade.

Inside the right aisle stands a memorial to the Second World War: an exact replica of an unexploded shell fired by the British fleet during the 1941 bombardment, which pierced the roof and failed to detonate. The replica commemorates the bombardment without being the original shell.

What to notice

• The bicolour front in grey Promontorio stone and white marble, with its three portals guarded by medieval lions; the striped facade was completed between 1307 and 1312, after a fire of 1296 had pushed the church towards Gothic forms.
• The chapel of Saint John the Baptist off the left aisle, a Renaissance ensemble raised to honour the patron whose relics the city claimed from the crusades.
• The loggias added to the towers in 1455 and 1522, and the mid-sixteenth-century redesign associated with Galeazzo Alessi, which rebuilt the vaulting, floor, dome and apse; the interior was completed in the 1600s with gilded stuccoes and frescoes of the Stories of Saint Lawrence by Lazzaro Tavarone.
• The Treasury museum occupies the medieval crypt spaces redesigned by Franco Albini in 1956. Its reliquaries and liturgical furnishings reflect the veneration of Saint John the Baptist, established as Genoa’s patron in 1327.
• The Sacro Catino itself — the hexagonal green dish the tradition claims as the Holy Grail, discussed below.

Context and history

The Sacro Catino is traditionally associated with Guglielmo Embriaco and the conquest of Caesarea in 1101, in the aftermath of the First Crusade; for centuries it was believed cut from a single emerald, and by tradition it was identified as the dish of the Last Supper — the Holy Grail — historically displayed at the beginning of Lent. Napoleon carried it to Paris, where examination established that it was glass rather than emerald; it probably broke on the journey back between Paris and Turin. The museum attributes the glass vessel to Syrian manufacture, possibly in the first century CE, while acknowledging that its date remains debated. The dish is kept in the cathedral treasury.

The building's later chapters kept pace with the city's: Alessi's sixteenth-century remodelling gave San Lorenzo the unified classical interior visible today, and the 1941 shell — replicated in situ — marked the Second World War's nearest brush with the cathedral's survival. Together with the adjacent Museo Diocesano, the cathedral forms the religious heart of the medieval centre.