St. Catherine's Convent

The foundation of St. Catherine's Convent is datable to 1359 for work of the Del Carretto family, feudal of the Marquisate of Finale, who used the complex as a prestigious and monumental burial area. Inhabited from 1381 by the Dominican friars, almost as if it were a zone "franca and inviolable", the convent was spared from the plunder taken in the lands of the marquisate in 1648 by the Republic of Genoa. The religious order occupied the complex until 1802, i.e. up to the suppression of the ecclesial orders wanted by the Napoleonic laws of the Ligurian Republic and of the First French Empire. From 1864 up to the eighties of the Twentieth Century intended to reclusorio, it was precisely in those years that he was initiated a sumptuous recovery project and restoring the entire assets of the former monastic complex. Further interventions, from 1995 to 2004, have also valued and kept the Church with the bell tower, the two inner cloisters, the walkways, the walls and the botanical garden.

The church dates back to the first half of the fifteenth century and was originally consists of three naves separated by columns in stone of Finale, two of which are of a square shape and a semicircular, facing toward the north. In the following centuries, following the various ecclesial regulations, it was changed the structure as the displacement to the opposite side of the apse; further alterations were made in the first half of the XIX century and even when the complex, in disuse, was converted into a prison. The interior preserves some cycles of frescoes of the early fifteenth century depicting mainly episodes of the life of the Virgin Mary. In the south side there are two portals in gothic style, both walled, said "Women" and "Men" with depictions of the noble ensigns of Del Carretto and of Agnus Dei. Dating back to the Renaissance are the two cloisters communicating at the side of the body of the church, built between 1500 and 1530 by the wishes of Cardinal Carlo Domenico Del Carretto. The bell tower, built on an apsidal chapel, suffered the demolition of the cusp following the earthquake of 1887 that involved the Ligurian Ponente.