Cattedrale Nostra Signora Assunta

Savona’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption was consecrated in 1605 on the site of the Franciscan church of San Francesco. It became the seat of the diocese after the medieval cathedral was demolished during the construction of Genoa’s Priamar fortress, and preserves works from that earlier church.

Why it matters

Mother church of the diocese of Savona-Noli, the cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption reflects the city’s sixteenth-century transformation under Genoese rule. After Savona surrendered to the Genoese under Andrea Doria in 1528, the victors built the Priamar fortress on the promontory where the city had been born; the ancient ninth-century cathedral stood inside that perimeter, was deconsecrated and was finally demolished in 1595, as the diocesan heritage catalogue of the Italian Episcopal Conference records. The cathedral title passed to the conventual church of San Francesco, where construction of a larger church began in 1589. It was consecrated in 1605.

What to notice

The frescoed apse basin and high altar by Pasquale Boccardo are prominent features, flanked by two eagles from the original altar bearing the city's insignia. The tabernacle, shaped as a little temple, was made in 1636 by the Jesuit Orazio Grassi on the model of the one in the church of the Gesù in Rome. Above the choir hangs the grand organ that the Genoese Filippo Piccaluga built for Francesco della Rovere in 1766; a later Mascioni electrical instrument was installed in the same case, keeping the original facade pipes. Near the entrance stands the fifteenth-century marble cross carved on both faces of a single block — Christ on the front, Madonna and Child on the back — and the fourteenth-century slate relief of the Assumption that once crowned the portal of the old cathedral. The white Renaissance pulpit with its hexagonal case, its triangular base carried by three winged sirens, figured by Antonio Maria Aprile with assembly and ornament by Giovanni Angelo Molinari; the city portal also credits the Renaissance wooden choir to the patronage of Giuliano della Rovere, later Pope Julius II.

Context and history

Construction proceeded slowly under the architect Battista Sormano. In 1601, discoveries during demolition work prompted new donations that allowed the walls to be completed; consecration followed in 1605, the bell tower was permitted and completed by 1613, and the interior floor was laid in 1628. The facade long remained incomplete: a design by the Savonese architect Giuseppe Cortese of 1840 was replaced by the one built to Guglielmo Calderini's project and finished in 1887, while the dome and lantern were only concluded in 1929. Between 1848 and 1851 the vaults and pillars received their painted decoration from Michele Canzio, Giuseppe Bozzano and Francesco Coghetti, in a richly decorated style.