Our Blog - Imperia, Italy

We were planning to spend a couple of hours in Imperia, but that just didn't happen. We drove in and, unfortunately, I had put in the wrong address into the navigation in the car and ended up on the other side of Imperia than we should have been. We turned around but then got caught in an awful downpour. Good news is that we were in the car at that point and so we pulled into a parking spot on the side of the road and sat it out. If we would have taken the correct exit, we would have been walking around and gotten drenched. Bad news is that we then ended up not really seeing much of Imperia.

The only thing we really got to see was the Duomo di San Maurizio. Started in 1781 and finished in 1838, the cathedral of San Maurizio was designed by the architect Gaetano Cantoni and represents the most prominent Ligurian neoclassical monument. The exterior façade is embellished with columns, semi-columns, pilasters on two floors, and two imposing side bell towers. At almost 33,000 sqare feet, it the largest church in Liguria. At the top of the facade there are three statues of Saints Etolo, Maurizio and Secondo, in the lower part of the pediment there are other statues of the prophets Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Isaiah. All seven statues were made by the Savona sculptor Stefano Brilla. In the niches behind the central colonnade there are statues of the four apostles Peter, Paul, James and Philip which date back to the 17th century.

The inside is impressive although in a different way than other churches. There is not that much color, but the massive space inside and the various domes are an interesting sight. Lucy enjoyed her time in the Duomo quite a bit ... rolling around on the floor for several minutes. I think she likes the texture ... or lack thereof ... of the cool marble floor.

From there, we headed up to our B&B. It was a bit out of town (which then required driving back to town for dinner) but the views made the drive worth it. From our balcony, you could see down the hill and out to the sea.

And then a somewhat-successful night picture or two.