Convento dei Cappuccini e chiesa di Santa Maria Immacolata

Above the eastern bay, where Sestri Levante's houses give way to olive terraces, the Capuchins established a new convent in 1688. The complex includes a belvedere overlooking the Baia del Silenzio.

Why it matters

The Convento dei Cappuccini and church of Santa Maria Immacolata form one of Sestri Levante's best-preserved monastic complexes, with a terrace overlooking the Baia del Silenzio. The Belvedere del Convento dei Cappuccini appeared in six editions of the FAI's "I Luoghi del Cuore" census from 2004 to 2022. The complex dates to 1683–1688, when the friars moved from their first house beside San Pietro in Vincoli to the slope above the bay.

What to notice

Built in a deliberately archaic, medievalizing style during the Baroque period, the church has a black-and-white striped facade and a single nave, in keeping with Capuchin simplicity. The main altar carries an eighteenth-century wooden statue of the Immacolata. The walls hold a painting of the miracle of Saint Anthony of Padua, once attributed to Domenico Fiasella, and a canvas of Saint Felix of Cantalice receiving the Christ Child, attributed to Giovanni Lorenzo Bertolotto. The complex includes convent walls and a terrace overlooking the bay, its houses, beach and headland.

Context and history

The Capuchins reached Sestri Levante in 1609 and built their first church in the historic centre in 1640 — the building that survives as San Pietro in Vincoli. Town life soon crowded them. The sale of 1686 transferred the old complex into the hands of the Secular Priests of San Pietro in Vincoli; the friars themselves had been raising their new, more isolated house on the slope east of the Baia del Silenzio between 1683 and 1688, and they transferred there in that final year. The friars managed the property directly until 1866, when sale to a private buyer left them in residence; between 1878 and 1890 parts of the complex were ceded to the town's civil hospital. The order once again runs the church, convent and garden. The municipal portal records paintings by Domenico Fiasella in the church, while the attribution of one canvas is qualified as "once attributed."