Chiesa di Nostra Signora di Loreto (Perti)

High above the Finale coast, in an olive grove at Perti, stands a compact Renaissance church of around 1470 whose five slender pinnacles earned it the nickname "of the five bell towers". Its design echoes Brunelleschi's Florence and the Portinari Chapel in Milan, translated by local craftsmen into Finale stone and red brick.

Why it matters

In the mid-fifteenth century, when architecture in this part of Liguria still followed the late-Gothic habits of Lombardy, the Del Carretto marquises raised at Perti a small central-plan church that spoke the new Florentine language instead. Built around 1470 by an unknown architect for Del Carretto patronage, Nostra Signora di Loreto imitates Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy at San Lorenzo of 1419 and looks also to the Portinari Chapel that the banker Pigello Portinari erected at Sant'Eustorgio in Milan between 1462 and 1468. The Museo Diffuso del Finale presents it as a notable example of fifteenth-century Renaissance architecture in western Liguria. It stands on a hillside among olive trees, with the rock walls of the valley of the Aquila behind it.

What to notice

The nickname "of the five bell towers" comes from the thin pinnacles that rise from the corner pilasters, built of Pietra di Finale and exposed brick. The main body is crowned by an octagonal drum: inside sits a hemispherical dome, and the drum finishes in a lantern carried on slender columns. A smaller apsidal volume, the scarsella, leans against the body under its own polygonal semi-drum. Inside, tall lesene with classical capitals frame the apse arch, and large circular oculi opening through the vault lunettes provide the light. The corner pilasters bear stone plaques with the horse-head emblem of the Del Carretto, including the parted shield celebrating the marriage of Giovanni I Del Carretto and Viscontina Adorno in 1452. The material dialogue of pale stone against warm brick repeats in the nearby church of San Sebastiano and in the Diamond Tower of Castel Gavone, the castle that this church faces across the ridge.

Context and history

Perti was the hillside district above Finalborgo where the Del Carretto maintained their castle of Govone, later known as Castel Gavone, and the church of Loreto was a deliberate statement of dynastic taste in a rural setting. It still dialogues visually with the castle and with the Romanesque bell tower of the church of Sant'Eusebio nearby. Local building teams translated the imported design into an original architectural language with Pietra di Finale as protagonist, and the building survived the fall of the marquisate and earthquakes that damaged other churches in the hills. The Museo Diffuso del Finale now presents it through its "Open door Open art" programme as a key monument of the Perti landscape.