
Chiesa di San Lorenzo
Romanesque church of banded black and white marble sheltering a relic said to have transformed by candlelight.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Chiesa di San Lorenzo in Cinque Terre opens around 1204, when a hollowed cedar log carrying relics from the sack of Constantinople is said to have drifted ashore in Portovenere and sat inside the church for two centuries. The story turns on the sixteenth of August, 1399, when a local man named Lucciardo knelt to pray before it with a candle burning below and something in the dark paint began to change. The town's notary, Giovanni di Michele of Vernazza, was called in afterward to gather eyewitnesses and write down what they swore they had seen.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Church of St. Margaret of Antioch
Slate church perched on a seaside rock, with a forty-meter octagonal bell tower crowned by an ogival dome.
Santuario di Nostra Signora di Reggio
Hilltop sanctuary housing a venerated dark-faced Madonna long credited with miraculous healings.
Chiesa della Madonna di San Bernardino
Mountainside sanctuary with a canvas Madonna said to have survived centuries untouched by decay.
Santuario Nostra Signora di Soviore
Hilltop Marian church with a legend of a buried statue and medieval ruins hidden beneath its floor.
Chiesa di San Pietro
Black-and-white banded Gothic church fused to a bare cliff, once repurposed as a coastal gun battery.
Santuario di Nostra Signora di Montenero
Hilltop pilgrimage church of stacked stone naves, reached only on foot through maritime pines above the terraced sea cliffs.