Altitude: 200 m a.s.l.
Area: 23 sq km
Distance from Imperia: 16 km
Inhabitants: in 1881: 2748 - in 2017: 881
Patron Saint Day: January 17th - Sant'Antonio Abate
Information: Municipality phone 0183 54571
Built before the year 1000 to defend the valley from the Saracens, the "Castrum" of the Maro, the main center of the valley, later became one of the strongholds of the Counts of Ventimiglia.
The toponym takes its name from Burgum Macri, the new settlement built at the foot of the castle during the fifteenth century, attested for the first time in 1583 in the form Burgo Macri, but it could also derive from the river name Macra or Maira, in the Latin meaning of "swamp", perhaps in reference to the particular richness of waters of the area, where, in addition to the various streams, there are sulfur springs, used in the past for the treatment of skin diseases.
The origin of the toponym is also connected to the numerous mills that existed in the area, and around which the main center was formed, which, instead of being called "Molini del Maro", took the official name of "Borgomaro".
Conquered by Charles of Anjou in 1279, it was taken back three years later by Enrico II Count of Ventimiglia, who united the fief with that of the nearby county of Prelà; in the fifteenth century it passed by marriage to the Lascaris of Tenda who in 1575 sold it to Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, who granted it as a fief to the Dorias.
After definitively becoming a Savoy dominion, Borgomaro underwent repeated attacks by Genoa, whose army woulod also demolish its castle in 1625 during the great war against the Savoys.
Significant are the two "Scunfeughi" still lit in Conio the first decade of August and that of Candeasco lit the first week of July. Also of sociological interest is the contemporary presence of the three confraternities: Red, White and Black. The Whites in favor of the Pope, the Reds in favor of the emperor and the Blacks who dealt with the "good death."
Visit of the town
At the beginning of the built-up area, at the corner with the oratory of San Rocco, the detour that leads to the seventeenth-century former convent of the Franciscans, today Orengo Demora foundation, branches off to the right. In the small church dedicated to Maria Immacolata there are numerous valuable works from the 1600s.
Back to the Provincial Road, park on the left on the riverfront and, after having thrown a few pieces of bread to the ducks that squawk in the water, take the main bridge that leads you to the church of Sant'Antonio, on whose left side you can see the arches supported by stone columns of the frescoed loggia of the original fifteenth-century construction, remodeled in the Baroque period. The church is rich in important works of art: the altar of Madonna della Misericordia, the pulpit, and of considerable interest the Crucifix of the Maragliano school.
On the mountain side of the square there is a beautiful fountain of 1892 with an octagonal stone basin; take the ramp that goes up next to it and at the crossroads take the right on Via Merano from which, past at number 42 the lintel of 1523 in black stone carved with a Trigram between two dolphins and the initials "IO MA", go down to the right under the vault of Via Mazzini.
There on the left at number 2 is Palazzo Doria with a beautiful black stone architrave portal carved with a Trigram in a tondo in the center, a bird on the left and the initials of the stone-cutter I B on the right; to the right of the portal there are two mullioned windows (unfortunately without the central column), with massive monolithic jambs and lintels carved respectively with a greyhound chasing a hare and a cross surmounted by stars. On the opposite house, half hidden by the plastic roof, there is an aedicule with a stone painted with the Virgin and Child.
Once back on Via Merano, walk a short stretch to the right to observe, under the architrave of number 16, the beautiful carved Trigram of 1534; then return to the intersection with Via Mazzini which you’ll take to the right going all the way up; at the house with a devotional tondo on the terrace, turn left and then right, reaching the intersection on which to your left is a medieval dry-stone house.
Climb the ramp that passes next to it and arrive to the small fountain from which you can go up the stairway to the right; on the right under the vault one hundred meters outside of town there is the rustic little church of Sant'Anna.
Upstream from the fountain climb the stairway to the right until you reach the restored parvis of the Oratory of San Giacomo incorporated in the adjacent dwellings, with a fresco of the saint and a panorama of the town painted on the façade.
From there go back down past the fountain to the medieval house where you’ll take the right to observe the foundations on the bare rock, and then pass next to the other similar house on your left with bulging protruding stones with quadrangular holes and stone shelves.
Continuing to descend through the narrow stairs, at the crossroads with the street paved with porphyry cubes, take the right to see at number 12 the beautiful black stone portal with monolithic jambs and canopy on shelves, with a partially corroded upper part; back to the descent and past the black stone portal with an architrave with an abraded coat of arms and the inscription: "GRATIA CONCEDITUR USU" on the left at number 8, arrive at the junction with the paved Via Merano and take the right to go and see, embedded above number 60, a plaque carved with a Trigram between floral motifs.
From there return to the church and then to the car observing, in crossing the bridge again, the cut off tower incorporated in a house in front of you on the right and the abandoned oratory of San Giovanni Battista decorated on the façade with a fresco of the saint.
Near Borgomaro is "Tana della Cava de ciappe", whose walls are covered with graffiti with inscriptions, drawings and geometric figures of uncertain attribution.
Back to the car continue to go up the stream, reaching at the end of the village the crossroads, which on the left leads to Conio and on the right to Aurigo; take the right, and at the next junction turn right again to reach Candeasco.
A more suggestive alternative excursion that also reaches Pieve di Teco goes from San Lazzaro Reale after the Roman bridge towards the right to Caravonica.
Park the car in the open space on the right at the beginning of the village, go up on foot to reach the seventeenth-century church of San Bernardino da Siena, observing how capitals and chunks of column of the original medieval construction are distributed at the border of the churchyard and under the vault facing it. Behind the church is the beautiful black stone portal of the birthplace of the architect Giovanni Francesco Marvaldi. On the right gushes the fountain with a drinking water hole surmounted by a beautiful sculpture of the Virgin and Child, the latter however beheaded.
Climb from here and then take the right on Via San Lazzaro until you leave the built-up area, walk two hundred meters along the paved road to Caravonica and then go up the ramp on the left which leads you to the beautiful wash-basin under a deep stone arch. From here, going up the little staircase on the right you’ll come to the sixteenth-century church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary with a bell gable and a portico with seats, whose churchyard was made by covering the stream that feeds the underlying wash-house with two vaults.
Take the road on the left, passing in front of the Melissano chapel, with the architrave carved with a beautiful "Annunciation" by Filipus Melibanius in 1566; proceeding among abandoned houses you’ll arrive to the intersection with the fountain on the right and opposite, at number 129, a portal with an architrave of 1596 carved with a Trigram and the inscription: "IN TE DOMINE CONFIDO", from which on the left you can return to the church and then to the car.
Leaving Borgomaro take the road to Ville San Sebastiano on the left, and after a kilometer and a half take on the right the detour that in a few hundred meters among olive trees leads to the ancient church of Santi Nazario and Celso, primitive matrix of the Maro valley.
The original church was built there in the early centuries of Christianity; the current structure was superimposed in 900 AD and then enlarged in the fifteenth century, when was also made the splendid black stone portal of the facade of 1498 with a braid motif and an architrave carved with an "Annunciation" and a Trigram in a radial pattern supported by angels. On the left side under the bell tower is the beautiful fifteenth-century portal of the side door, with an architrave carved in a Trigram, an Agnus and the coat of arms of the Grand Bastard of Savoy (Renato di Savoia-Villars), Lord of the Maro in the first half of the sixteenth century.
Turn around the church to observe, from the splayed single-light window that opens on the right side, the interior with the classic three-nave fifteenth-century structure with low columns, bases and capitals in black stone, one of which carved with numerous guardian wizards, and Gothic arches with white and black bands; there are also an anonymous fresco of the Virgin and Child, an architrave with the coat of arms of the Counts of Ventimiglia and the black stone tabernacle of 1530 to the right of the high altar. Inside is the polyptych of Saints Nazario and Celso by Raffaele De Rossi (1525).
Back to the Provincial Road, after seven hundred meters you’ll be in Maro Castello; park in the small square at the beginning of the town where the road goes around the few remains of the medieval castle completely destroyed by Genoa in 1625. Here is also the beautiful fountain built in 1866 with a stone basin on an embedded pillar in the center, with at the two sides the large basins of the wash-house and on the right the other two very large ones for the animals.
Opposite is the Church of Assunta of 1608, which preserves behind the high altar the seventeenth-century anonymous "Assumption" polyptych; beyond the church you can go and see, a little further to the right at number 8, the round plaque with a beautiful bas-relief of the Virgin and Child of the aedicule which disappeared with the restoration of the house on which it is affixed.
Back to the car on the Provincial Road, continue among olive tree groves that begin to give way to the wood, reaching Ville San Sebastiano in three kilometers, where you can park next to the church of the same name, built in the fifteenth century but then enlarged in the Baroque period with the demolition of the side walls and the extension of the façade and the apse to become the side walls of the new building. On the current entrance is a quadrangular plaque of 1492 carved with a Gothic Trigram in a radiating tondo; the original portal, now walled up, is located on the right wall of the building and preserves the monolithic architrave carved with a Gothic Trigram in two simple concentric circles.
If you leave the column trunk of the original building on the right, pass by the right side of the church and take the ramp beyond the little square, you’ll have in front of you the crossroads that symbolically expresses the two roads that the village can take: on the left the archaic dwellings now in the process of decay due to their abandonment, on the right the restored ones, a positive sign for the development of the town.
Returning to the car, on the Provincial Road immediately after the church, take the detour on the left, in correspondence with the wash house, which, taking a right at the fork and then a right again, leads you to the Sanctuary of Madonna della Neve which preserves a beautiful marble statue of the Madonna and Child of the seventeenth century.
Once back again on the Provincial Road, take the left and after four hundred meters you’ll find the crossroads which on the left, in seventeen kilometers, would take you to Carpasio; yet you’ll take instead the right and will therefore enter in Ville San Pietro, parking in the open space in front of the church, with a fountain made of the stone "pile" of an oil mill.
The town of Ville San Pietro is divided into five hamlets: Marpero, with its chapel of Madonna del Carmine of 1600; Barca, with the seventeenth-century chapel of the Ascension; Ciappariolo, with the chapel of Santa Lucia of the fifteenth century; Costa and Case Soprane, with the chapel of Madonna delle Grazie of 1680.
The parish church of Ville San Pietro is the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli that you’ll find in front of you, rebuilt in Baroque style in the seventeenth century, with a bell tower that has kept the slits on all sides under the clock. From the side door, after passing the two meters thick wall with the small stone stoup on the right, you’ll reach the interior that preserves the round baptismal font of 1306 on the right, next to the main entrance, built from a monolith and mounted on a black stone column; on the opposite side of the door is a stone plaque of 1774, and another one of 1597 is located a little further on.
Behind the church stands the sixteenth-century oratory of the Disciplinanti di San Pietro, a confraternity whose primary social purpose was the collection and management of funds destined to pay the ransom for the villagers kidnapped and enslaved by the "Turks"; above the portal there is a beautiful plaque with a bas-relief of Saint Peter Enthroned, a theme that is repeated inside in the beautiful anonymous canvas of 1507 above the altar, installed on a low monolithic base of roughly chiseled stone and surmounted by grotesque stuccoes that depict the Virgin and angels.
Back to the car continue along the Provincial Road that climbs up among the chestnut groves -becoming narrower and more tormented- that brings you to Conio (from "cuneo"), the highest village in the valley (650 m asl) located in a beautiful panoramic position, famous for the goodness of its beans (a slow food presidium). The road circumvents the town and you’ll follow it until you’ll park next to the oratory of Annunziata, with a porch with seats covered with trusses; the interior, with paved floor, preserves an anonymous sixteenth-century "Annunciation".
The oratory is faced by two contiguous vaults that house the fountain and the trough; from there take the flat road on the left passing the two loopholes on the right that defended the access to the village and, passing under the vault, go to the left reaching the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (Chiesa della Natività di Maria Vergine), built in 1624 and restored at the beginning of the twentieth century. The interior, on a circular plan, preserves on the right a rustic stone stoup and the anonymous seventeenth-century canvas "The Mysteries of the Rosary" with the Virgin on the throne in the center.
Leaving the church take immediately to the left under the tunnel and, keeping the left, go around the building, of which you can see the foundations on the bare rock, returning to the small churchyard. From there retrace the flight of steps that led you to the church, then taking the left under the vault; the visit of the small village takes you back of almost one millennium, amidst stone houses of pure medieval structure with the archaic "ciappe" roofing (i.e. with stone slabs), whose stones have been taken from the nearby mountains.
Proceed passing under the vault of the house on whose façade a window with monolithic jambs opens on the left and, arriving to the little square, continue to climb the concrete flight of steps, thus arriving in front of the thirteenth-century Castle of the Counts of Ventimiglia.
The massive construction presents its stone façade with loopholes and large windows; take the ramp on the right and reach the entrance, passing the small grassy area with on the righ a stone well that gets its water from a cistern formerly fed by a medieval aqueduct. The left door leads into the atrium where there are the interior doors with monolithic portals; on the left, supported by a beautiful octagonal stone column, is the staircase leading to the upper floor. The main entrance door leads you into the large hall with large windows that dominate the entire valley; on the opposite wall there was, above the door, an architrave with a bas-relief reproducing the same castle with, at the sides, the Ventimiglia marquis coats of arms, which was removed in the recent 1960s.
Go down the concrete ramp taking a left and then a right reaching the car on which, coming back, twenty meters after the crossroads, take the left going down to the Church of San Maurizio. The original Romanesque construction erected in the 12th century was shorter and with a single nave; in the following centuries the church was lengthened, and enlarged with the addition of the left aisle, built with two low stone columns with Doric capitals linked by round arches.
The roof is trussed; on the left wall there is a small original single-light window, while the windows of the right-hand wall were opened later. The square bell tower with a buttress at the base has small single lancet windows on three sides, and a pentagonal plaque, now corroded, is affixed on the front side. To the right of the bell tower opens the entrance door of the church, surmounted by a cross-shaped window; on the left is the window from which you can see the interior, with stone benches along the walls.
In the apse is preserved the archaic stone niche with hanging arches on the base that houses the statue of the saint; on the right wall near the apse there is a rich fourteenth-century tomb, probably of a Ventimiglia family member, with a canopy on a large black stone arch.
Descending towards Borgomaro, at the junction take the road on the right that takes you to Aurigo.