Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista

Riomaggiore's parish church stands in the upper borgo. Founded in 1340 by the bishop of Luni, it reflects the prosperity of Genoese rule. Its striped Gothic character, a rose window dated by inscription to 1471 and side portals carved with dragons and processions of animals make it the artistic benchmark of the upper borgo.

Why it matters

Riomaggiore's religious architecture reaches its full height in this parish church, one of the most fully documented buildings of the Cinque Terre. It was begun in 1340 at the initiative of Antonio Fieschi, bishop of Luni, in the period when Genoese authority brought enough stability and money for the villages to build ambitious churches. The building has since absorbed collapse and reconstruction without losing its medieval identity: thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sculpture survives on its flanks, a dated rose window crowns the front, and its interior preserves paintings attributed to some of the most interesting names in Ligurian art. As a living parish of the diocese of La Spezia-Sarzana-Brugnato, it remains the centre of village religious life.

What to notice

The two portals on the south side are original to the 1340 building. Their capitals and architraves carry zoomorphic and anthropomorphic carving close to the Romanesque tradition of the Antelami circle: a dragon chases a deer, and a procession of animals—wolf, fox, crow and rooster—has been read as an episode from the Roman de Renart. On the facade, the white-marble rose window carries an inscription, kept in the bell tower, that dates it to 1471; it fell with the old facade around 1870 and was reset in its present position in the early 1960s. Inside, the basilical plan is supported by columns of differing styles joined by ogival arches. The interior includes a painting of the Predicazione di San Giovanni Battista, attributed locally to Domenico Fiasella, and a 1507 triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints Rocco and Sebastiano, attributed to the Maestro delle Cinque Terre and transferred from the oratory beside the castle. Other works include a carved wooden Crucifix by Anton Maria Maragliano, a 1663 marble pulpit bearing a relief traditionally linked to the demolished San Martino Vecchio in Biassa, an eighteenth-century wooden choir and an 1851 organ by the Pistoia firm Agati.

Context and history

The parish of Riomaggiore depended in the Middle Ages on the pieve of Marinasco and on the church of San Martino vecchio at Biassa, and the Montenero hillside then formed a separate centre; the present church asserted the village's new weight when it was founded on 8 November 1340, with construction recorded between 1340 and 1343 under Bishop Antonio Fieschi. Disaster struck in the nineteenth century: around 1870 the facade collapsed, and the rebuilding that followed gave the church its neogothic front while the community recovered and later reinstalled the rose window. The sacristy portal, crowned by a fifteenth-century relief of the Madonna with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Francis, echoes a triptych in the Oratorio di Santa Maria Assunta, reflecting the close artistic ties among the village's churches.