Chiesa di San Pietro

Corniglia's parish church stands above the village of Corniglia, set back from the shoreline. Begun for the Fieschi lords in 1334 and crowned with a Carrara-marble rose window in 1351, it keeps a severe Ligurian Gothic face outside, while inside a baroque-vaulted hall holds a medieval font, an altarpiece and stained glass by Trento Longaretti.

Why it matters

San Pietro is the religious centre of Corniglia and has stood at the heart of the village for centuries. A document of 1261 already records a church of San Pietro standing in the middle of the borgo, and the present building, raised in the mid-fourteenth century on the site of an older church, is credited by the diocese of La Spezia-Sarzana-Brugnato to the itinerant Maestri Campionesi. It remains an active parish. The Cinque Terre National Park describes it as an example of Ligurian Gothic architecture.

What to notice

The grey stone facade is closed by sloping sections and rows of small hanging arches. The rose window at its centre is carved from white Carrara marble and dated 1351: the park authority and specialist guides attribute it, together with the sculptures in the portal lunette, to Matteo and Pietro da Campiglio. A bas-relief of a deer appears on the facade; the animal is also an emblem of Corniglia. Remains of polychrome cobbles survive in the forecourt.

Inside, the three-aisled plan survives under a later baroque barrel vault. The baptismal font is a twelfth-century survivor from the earlier church. A polyptych stands at the head of the right aisle. Behind the high altar, two stained-glass windows by Bergamo painter Trento Longaretti, who kept a studio in Corniglia, cast coloured light across the choir. Since 2016, a seventeenth-century work by Corniglia-born Prospero Luxardi has hung beside the altar of the Madonna del Rosario. It comprises eighteen panels of the mysteries of the Rosary and the Last Judgment.

Context and history

The documentary record extends back to the thirteenth century. Corniglia appears in a contract of the commune of Genoa in 1211, and in 1261 the church of San Pietro in the centre of the borgo is named as a filiale of the Pieve di San Stefano di Marinasco. The medieval building belonged to the orbit of the Fieschi, the counts of Lavagna who controlled the village before the republic of Genoa took over; an inscription on the facade records the start of work in 1334, and specialists date the completion of the facade, with its marble rose window and lunette statues, to 1351. Later centuries added the baroque vaulting and altars that now define the interior, without breaking the Gothic shell. The church stands at the top of via Fieschi, the street running through the village from the main square toward the terrace.