Altitude: 5 m a.s.l.
Area: 36.5 sq km
Distance from Imperia: 29 km
Inhabitants: in 1881: 5,304 - in 2017: 24,144
Patron Saint Day: September 29th - San Michele
Information: Municipality phone 0182 5621
Albenga has the most significant monumental center of western Liguria.
The name of Albenga derives from the original Albium Ingaunum, formerly the pre-Roman capital of all the belligerent tribes of the Ligurian Ingauni, originally located on the "Monte" to the west of the current city as evidenced by substantial findings on the spot dating back to the 4th century BC.
The Roman colonization (from 181 BC) with the opening of Via Julia Augusta (13 BC), but above all the wide, extremely fertile alluvial plain behind it, favored a lively development of the "oppidum" which came to dominate the area from Finale to Sanremo on the coast and from Ceva to Mondovì in the hinterland, establishing itself as one of the most flourishing centers of western Liguria.
The city would later be devastated by the Vandals arrived by sea and by the Goths of Atalulfo arrived by land in 400 AD and immediately rebuilt by Costanzo.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions, Albenga was reduced to "vicus", but already in the seventh century it was the capital of the Longobard and Frank Committee.
Obtained as a fief around the year 1000 by the Countess Adelaide of Susa who held there her court, in 1098 Albenga became a free Commune and sent its men to the first Crusade; in 1100 it passed under the Clavesana and then under the Republic of Genoa, to which it remained always subordinated.
Visit of the town
Coming from the west, after passing the bridge over the Centa river, take an immediate right and park; then cross the road on foot and at the traffic light continue towards the historic center.
The medieval Piazza San Michele, which opens up in front of you with its towers, the municipal palace, the nearby cathedral and the baptistery behind it constitute an exceptional monumental complex of genuine thirteenth-century style, rich both in history and in visual appeal: to the right of the cathedral with its fourteenth-century bell tower is the Palazzo Vecchio of the Municipality with its tower built in 1200, flanked to the west by the coeval Torre dei Malasemenza.
On the ground floor of the old town hall you will find the Loggia Municipale, today the seat of the Civic Museum which preserves among other things Roman tombstones, sarcophagi and high-medieval millstones.
After getting the ticket at the box office (in front) that sells tickets for the three city museums, through the medieval loggia that houses the museum you can access the Baptistery.
The building, erected about four hundred years after the death of Christ, constitutes a testimony of absolute interest, arrived to us practically intact through more than fifteen hundred years, the only paleochristian monument of all Liguria.
Every step you take down takes you back a hundred years, sinking more and more into History, and at the end of the staircase you are at the time when the Roman Empire was crumbling under the pressure of barbarian invasions: just a few centuries have passed since a Man spoke on the other side of the sea, in the unknown distant Palestine beyond which "there are only lions". Yet His word, repeated from mouth to mouth, from the other end of the known world has incredibly already arrived here with such strength that the primitive local Christian community is committed to this moving, splendid realization.
The archaic construction has an octagonal plan, marked along the inner perimeter by eight columns of Corsican granite with a Corinthian capital from which the arches that support the vault rise, originally supported by ribs made of amphorae strung one into the other, unfortunately demolished in 1900 during the first restoration of the building; in the center there is the basin for immersion baptism and a second basin is located in front of the entrance.
In the spaces between the columns alternate semicircular and rectangular niches; the one in front of those who enter is decorated with a rare mosaic that reproduces a Trigram, doves and lambs, the only example of a subject in Byzantine style throughout northern Italy other than those of Ravenna.
Two windows are made of finely perforated stone; of the same period (700 AD) are the two tombs "ad arcosolio" (excavated, that is, with an arched roof), one of which was later reused in the sixteenth century as reveals the coat of arms sculpted on the left.
Going back up the stairs you’ll enter the Loggia Municipale for a visit to the Roman and medieval remains preserved there; leaving the museum you’ll have on your side the Cathedral of San Michele whose history has been carefully reconstructed thanks to a meticulous excavation campaign.
It thus emerged that, even before the construction of the baptistery, on the area now occupied by the church stood a late-Roman building, radically restructured around AD 450 to create the primitive early Christian church with three naves to which side the baptistery was placed.
Of this church, like the pre-existing Roman building, there are clear traces in the foundations; in the thirteenth century the building was restored in Romanesque style and in the seventeenth century further restructured in Baroque style.
From the thirteenth century are also the Romanesque lower part of the façade, the similar one in large blocks of Cisano stone of the bell tower (later extended in bricks in 1391) and the external apses.
High on the façade under the large rose window are remains of medieval sculptures; hanging arches carved in the corbels with bucrani (bull's heads) and guardian wizards are along the perimeter of the roof.
Two massive guardian wizards also watch over on the jambs of the right door of the facade, while the other door is decorated by an Agnus; the lunette of the door on the left side is richly carved as well as carved with different motifs is on the right side of the facade also the edge that divides the lower Romanesque original part from the upper one.
The restorations have brought the building back to its original structures, recovering, especially inside, the atmosphere of cozy solemnity.
In the apse it preserves sixteenth-century frescoes, perhaps by Canavesio, faced by the monumental seventeenth-century organ chest; altarpieces, miniated books and anything else that was part of the "treasure" of the church was taken away to be exhibited in the safest Diocesan Museum.
Once outside, turn right along the side of the church; on your left, beyond the octagonal baptistery - of which you can closely observe the carved stones that enclose its windows - there is the thirteenth-century Palazzo dei Del Carretto di Balestrino decorated with a fresco with a coat of arms, already a bishop's residence and today home of the well-stocked Diocesan Museum which exhibits paintings, reliquaries, a fourteenth-century miniated codex and sacred furnishings, secured from the risk of theft in the churches of the diocese.
Some rooms of the former bishop's house - particularly interesting are the bedroom with a coffered ceiling and the "throne room" - preserve frescoes of 1459-1466 by Giovanni Balaison.
The three apses of the cathedral, embellished with hanging arches and arches on columns of classic Romanesque style, project onto Piazza dei Leoni (i.e. Square of Lions, depicted in natural size in the three piperino stone sculptures of 1607); opposite stands the tower with a sundial of the thirteenth-century house Costa-Balestrino with its elegant mullioned windows.
The entire historical center of Albenga is of genuine thirteenth-century style, so rich in medieval palaces, towers (with stone-block bases and brick tops) and loggias, closed in the still intact circle of walls with its gates, that it is impossible to make a brief description here; not to mention the Roman and early medieval ruins on which the current city literally "floats".
Suggesting to continually raise your eyes to observe the towers and the elegant mullioned windows that quilt the façade of the buildings that we will quote, from Piazza dei Leoni pass under the arch of the Costa-Balestrino house and then turn left on Via Lengueglia, to whose crossroads with Via Medaglie d'Oro on the left is Cepollini house with its tower.
Taking the right you’ll arrive to Porta Molino, from which the wide archivolt on the left leads you into the deep Middle Ages along the internal path of the walls on which two wide low loopholes open, until, turning left, you reach the eighteenth-century Porta Torlaro which still preserves the hinges and holes for the latches.
As you can see exiting outside, the walls, which in some stretches still preserve the original battlements, continue to completely surround the village on the two sides.
Returning through Porta Torlaro take the right reaching the widening where stand the nineteenth-century house of San Vincenzo de Paoli and the oratory of Our Lady of Mercy (Nostra Signora della Misericordia) of 1679; from here take the left to return to Via Medaglie d'Oro which you can retrace heading to the right.
The blue plate
Between 1994 and 1999, in the area of the northern necropolis of Albenga (the Roman Albingaunum), at the depth of about three meters, five funerary monuments of the Roman imperial age were brought to light, named with numbers from I to V.
The front of these monuments overlooked Via Julia Augusta, whose route coincides with that of the present Viale Pontelungo.
The monument (or enclosure) II, with a rectangular plan, occupied the entire space between monuments I and III and incorporated an older one, the IV, with a circular plan.
Monument II, based on the data obtained from the archaeological stratigraphy and from the equipment of the only tomb built inside it, can be dated to between the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd century AD.
Tomb 26, consisting of a large ditch dug into the ground, is of the type called bustum, or "direct cremation", characterized by the fact that the places of incineration and burial coincide (as opposed to the ustrinum, or “indirect incineration”, in whose practice the body was cremated in one place and the ashes deposited in another).
At the center of the pit a smaller dimple was dug which was the actual tomb which, besides the ashes of the dead, contained the funeral equipment.
Bone analysis revealed that the deceased was an adult male whose identity is not known; a large cobalt blue glass plate (diam. 41.2 cm) was part of the kit, cast in a mold, ground and polished on a lathe on both sides.
The decoration, which can be fully appreciated by looking at the dish in transparency, is made of carvings on the wheel and on the lathe and of incisions made by hand, with a metal tip, on the lower side; while along the edge a double frame of pearls and ovoli unwinds.
In the central disk is the Dionysian scene of two dancing Bacchic putti.
The putto on the right, without wings, holds a skin on the shoulders with the left hand, while the right hand holds the thyrsus to which a ribbon is tied; the putto on the left, winged, holds a six-pipe Pan flute in his right hand while holding a pedum (shepherd's curved stick) with the other hand.
The shape and decoration of the plate are faithful transpositions of silver trays of the middle imperial age, while the scene of the two Bacchic putti is part of a figurative repertoire among the most common of the Roman imperial age.
In addition to the "blue plate", as it is now commonly referred to, three vitreous bottles and a lamp were part of the grave funeral equipment.
In the dimple were also found remains of the glass ointment bottles, melted in the fire of the pyre, which contained the “olea et odores” offered to the deceased during the funeral ceremony.
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Via Medaglie d'Oro is the modern name of the Roman "Cardine massimo" that connects Porta Molino to Porta San Siro, the two passages through which Via Julia Augusta entered and exited from Albium Ingaunum, coming from Pontelungo to the east and heading west to the early Christian area of San Calogero to then climb up the "Monte" to the amphitheater, to the “Pilone” and then continue towards Alassio among the villas overlooking the sea of the owners of the time.
Exactly in the middle of its route, the "Cardine massimo" meets, in the strict Roman topography, the "Decumano massimo" (now Via Maineri with the subsequent Via Ricci) at the intersection that marks the center of the city; on the left is the Loggia dei Quattro Canti and on the opposite corner the D'Aste-Rolandi Tower and medieval house, followed by the Fieschi-Ricci house with elegant three-mullioned windows on the upper floors; on the right corner is the Tower and the Lengueglia-Doria house.
Turn right on Via Maineri heading to the center of the square from which you can see on the left the nucleus of medieval brick houses, with mullioned windows and marble columns, which you can flank taking on the left Via Cottalasso; once in Piazza San Domenico you can go all the way to the end of the vault on the right to see the remains of the church and convent of San Domenico.
After crossing the square up to the schools, take on the left the alley that brings you back to Via Medaglie d'Oro; at the crossroads you’ll have Casa degli Stucchi on the right and in front on the opposite corner Palazzo Rolandi Ricci with its tower.
Taking the right along Via Medaglie d'Oro cross Porta San Siro which leads you to the Trento riverfront flanked by the remains of the sixteenth-century walls; near the opposite shore the traces of the Roman aqueduct can be clearly seen in the river bed.
Walk along a short stretch of Via Trento towards the sea and then return to the walls along Vico al Monte; when you reach Via Roma you’ll have in front of you the tower and palace Peloso-Cepolla facing in the nearby Piazza San Michele the tower and the house of the Lengueglias, the Lords of the town.
In Cepolla palace there is now the Roman Naval Museum which exhibits, among other findings, a few hundred of the ten thousand amphorae carried by the sixty meters long Roman cargo vessel sunk in the 1st century AD off the island of Gallinara, whose load has been partially recovered.
The premises on the ground floor house the Prehistoric Museum which exhibits the stone findings recovered in the excavations of Val Pennavaira to the east of Albenga.
Leaving the museum, go around the building turning left on Via Cavour where the Fieschi-Ricci house is located on the right; then turn right on Via Medaglie d'Oro and at the junction with the loggia take another right on Via Ricci, finally take the first street on the left.
After flanking the episcopal palace and observing the large frescoed coat of arms on the wall, continue up to Via Lengueglia; here turn right and walk along Via Pertinace, at the end of which turn right into Piazza San Francesco and cross it.
On the left there is an open space with a vault beyond which are (also behind the railing) the arches and the low columns with a rosette carved capital of the disappeared convent of San Francesco whose area is ingloriously reduced to a garage today; returning to the small square you’ll have on the left the apse of the church of Santa Maria in fontibus, whose origin dates back before the year one thousand, that has been rebuilt in the Baroque period preserving its fourteenth-century portal with a three-light window.
Faced by a mullioned window, affixed on the external edge of the bell tower, there is the Roman funeral memorial of the Pubilia family of the 2nd century AD.
Opposite the facade of the church, at the corner of Via Oddo, stand the Cazzulini tower and house; after observing on the right (above the numbers 1 and 2) the plaque reproducing St. George in the act of killing the dragon, proceeding through this street you can take a look on the right at the characteristic Piazza delle Erbe, the ancient city market, where on the right at number 7 stands a beautiful black stone portal carved with guardian-wizards both in the jambs and on the sides of the architrave.
Continuing along Via Oddo at the intersection with Via Roma you’ll face the tower and Palazzo Oddo on the left; turn left on Via Roma and reach piazza Trincheri which you can cross along to observe, at the top left, the Torre della Paciotta.
After visiting the historic center on foot, you can take the car back to the east past the traffic light; traveling along Via Genova, that leaves the circle of walls which are now incorporated into the houses to the left, at the traffic light of Porta Molino continue to the right along Viale Pontelungo, then stop at the end of the straight road where you can park on the left at the eighteenth-century Sanctuary of Pontelungo.
Immediately after the bend, the ten arches of the medieval Pontelungo (i.e. long bridge) -which once spanned the Centa river- await you; around the fifteenth century, however, the river changed its course leaving the bridge dry, now buried in the open countryside.
Excavations nearby have unearthed the remains of the early Christian Basilica of San Vittore from the fourth century AD.
Taking the car again you can continue towards Ceriale along the road flanked by beautiful flower (even exotic ones like orchids) greenhouses and, after about three kilometers, you can take the detour to the left marked by the sign to the church of San Giorgio.
After a hundred meters you’ll find the Parish Charity held by "Serve di Gesù", nuns who will entrust you with the key of the church, located in the Campochiesa graveyard.
The Romanesque church of San Giorgio with its mullioned bell tower with no dome was erected in the 12th century and remodeled two centuries later; inside, covered in trusses, the apse is entirely frescoed with the terrifying scenes of the punishment of the damned of an anonymous "Last Judgment" of 1446 and frescoes from the 13th-14th centuries decorate the two side-apses and part of the walls.
Returning by car to Albenga after the traffic light and the bridge continue for a few hundred meters and then take the right on Via Ruffini and then right again on Via San Calocero and, after a hundred meters, take the ramp on the left that goes up to the "Monte" (i.e. the Mountain).
After a hundred meters, on the left rises the low quadrangular tower called "Il Pilone", which is believed to be a Roman funerary monument of the second century after Christ; a hundred meters further opens up to the right the vast widening where the ruins of the Roman amphitheater of the third century AD came to light and, leaning against its western side, those of the fourteenth-century Benedictine abbey of San Martino.
Go back by car and at the first intersection take the left and head up; upon reaching the church, go up again to the left and park after three hundred meters.
There, on the left, passes Via Julia Augusta of which you can walk this first well-preserved stretch, three and a half meters wide and well paved and delimited; continuing on the left you will find, after about a kilometer, interspersed on the mountain side of the road, remains of monumental tombs and of a Roman villa in the classic masonry with small cubic ashlars, and finally you’ll arrive, at the “Capo” of the same name, to the Romanesque church of Santa Croce built around the year one thousand.
On the Gallinara island you have in front of you (one mile from Albenga) there are the remains of the Benedictine abbey of Santa Maria and San Martino.