Chiesa di San Francesco

Rapallo's Franciscan church has four parallel naves divided by two-tone octagonal pillars, with Genoese paintings and carving from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

Why it matters

Franciscan friars of the Minori Osservanti received this land in 1519 and, with the town's podestà, began the church and convent. Its interior has four naves supported by bichrome octagonal pillars, an unusual arrangement in the Rapallo area. The convent's later history also reflects religious suppression: during the Napoleonic era it became a school, a civic function that continued in later centuries.

What to notice

The four naves are divided by octagonal pillars faced in contrasting stones. The first altar of the right nave holds Giovanni Battista Borzone's painting “Sant'Antonio resuscitates a dead man.” A carved wooden group by Anton Maria Maragliano in the chapel beside the main nave depicts Christ crowned with thorns. Other works include “San Francesco on his bed of brambles” by Giovanni Battista Casoni, a “Baptism of Jesus” attributed to Luca Cambiaso, and a late-sixteenth-century canvas of the Miracle of San Diego by Giovanni Domenico Cappellino. The contrast between the plain pillars, gilt altars and side-chapel paintings reflects the church's layered interior.

Context and history

The friars' foundation of 1519 flourished for nearly three centuries before the revolutionary laws of the Ligurian Republic suppressed the religious orders: on 12 November 1798 the convent became a primary school, and in 1812 the building passed to the hospital of Sant'Antonio — whose own seat is today's town hall — before reopening as a boarding college in 1818. In 1850, after restoration of the convent ordered by Pope Clement VIII back in 1601 and many changes since, the school-college became the property of the Comune of Rapallo, styled a royal school of the Kingdom of Sardinia, with teaching entrusted to the Somaschi Fathers. The former convent's educational role followed its conversion into a primary school in 1798 and later a boarding college in 1818. The Genoa superintendency protects the church, a conventual building associated with local workshops.