Largo Taragio con Monumento ai Caduti

Largo Taragio is the small central square of Corniglia, framed by village houses and the oratory of Santa Caterina. A bronze war memorial adds a place of collective remembrance to this compact meeting space.

Why it matters

The square is an opening within the dense fabric of the hilltop village. Its combination of domestic buildings, confraternity oratory and memorial brings everyday communal life, religious tradition and twentieth-century remembrance into one setting.

What to notice

Santa Caterina rises above one side of the square, while the surrounding houses maintain the relatively low, broad forms characteristic of Corniglia. The bronze memorial, attributed to the La Spezia sculptor Enrico Carmassi, commemorates the village's fallen of the First World War. Its human scale suits the intimate space around it.

Context and history

Largo Taragio's eighteenth-century character is closely associated with the oratory, dated to around 1700. The war memorial introduced a later commemorative layer after the First World War. The square thus records successive forms of shared identity without losing its place within the older village fabric.