Oratorio di San Rocco

At the water's edge below the old town, the Oratorio di San Rocco occupies the site of Lerici's earliest documented church and took its present patron after the plague of 1524. A confraternity hall for three centuries, it still shows five altars, slate altarpieces and a bell tower that began life as a Roman watchtower.

Why it matters

The Regione Liguria cultural-heritage census identifies the oratory as rebuilt on the remains of the first church of which the town has sure notice, dedicated to Saints Martin and Christopher and standing outside the walled borgo beside a channel that ran to the sea. After the plague of 1524, the community dedicated the building to San Rocco, protector against plague, and a 1584 apostolic visit already describes a roofed, paved and whitewashed oratory with three altars. From 1649 its Confraternita della Mortis et Orationis buried the poor, pilgrims, travellers and the drowned, a charitable role that links the oratory to the town's civic history.

What to notice

The interior contains five altars. The oldest panel, an oil on slate of the Virgin with Saints Andrew and Rocco, bears the cartouche Salus Infirmorum (health of the sick) and depicts a snake-topped staff and a small dog, symbols associated with San Rocco. The high-altar panel, depicting Christopher, Martin, Sebastian and Rocco, is attributed to Zacchia da Vezzano. The Holy Family with Saints Eligio and Anthony Abbot, once attributed to Fiasella, is now assigned to Giovan Battista Casoni. On the exterior, a lunette of San Rocco crowns the portal, medieval inscriptions stud the bell-tower facade, and the oldest stone on the tower records the year 1287 and the name of its builder, Massaro Palmerino.

Context and history

The tower beside the oratory tells its own half of the story. The adjacent bell tower incorporates an older watchtower, later raised into a campanile, with the Genoese coat of arms inside marking, like a miniature Lanterna, the entrance to the port. The church that originally stood here, dedicated to Saints Martin and Christopher, is associated with a 1287 plaque, and the comune suggests the oratory probably rose over a hospice for pilgrims passing through the port; notaries drafted their acts in the external corner known as er canto. The census then follows the confraternity through good and bad times: aggregation to the archconfraternity of Rome in 1669, sharing the hall with the Company of Our Lady of Carmine, interdiction after disputes with bishop Giulio Cesare Lomellini in 1763, restoration of worship between 1794 and 1797, a spell as seat of the powerful Company of Sant'Erasmo from 1810 to 1825, use as a national-guard quarters in 1815 and 1849, and finally designation in 1890 as a succursale church of the parish of Lerici.