Moneglia

Ancient fishing and agricultural village, located in the small bay between Punta Moneglia and Punta Rospo, sees its development around two main buildings located at the end of the town: the castle of Monleone, overlooking Via Aurelia, and the castle of Villafranca, built by the Genoese in medieval times. The historic centre of Moneglia is known for being the birthplace of the Genoese school painter Luca Cambiaso who lived in modern times. Not far away, you can admire the parish church of Saint Cross, built in the eighteenth century on the area of an ancient medieval parish church; on the right side of the building, there is a marble plaque of 1290, in memory of the destruction of the port of Pisa carried out by the Genoese after the battle of Meloria.

The toponym ad Monilia, although Moneglia was already known during the Augustan period, is indicated in the Tabula Peutingeriana, a military document of the Roman Empire drawn in 1100 and kept at the National Library of Vienna. The first news about the establishment and development of the village entangle with legends. We find a note by Agostino Giustiniani within the Annali della Repubblica di Genova (Annals of the Republic of Genoa) in 1500 stating that Monilia was created by merging two villages that were longer than wide, underlying the Latin derivation of its name (from the "precious jewels” represented by the orchards and pleasant hills which surround this land). Since the Middle Ages, Moneglia played an important role as an outpost of the Republic of Genoa and today, of the two castles, strategically positioned, the Villafranca and Monteleone ruins are still visible, oriented east and west of the village. From the ancient village, in the 1100s, various people set off to settle in Genoa: it was the De Monelia family, who held important positions in the city. Allied with Genoa against Pisa, Moneglia, in 1200, intervened with his ships in the battle of Meloria, whose evidence is still preserved through two links of the chain that closed Porto Pisano, destroyed by Genoa after the victory. The traces are still visible on the façade of the church of Saint Cross: a part of those chains were infixed on the main Genoese monuments but they were returned to the ancient rival after the unification of Italy. The village is dominated by the two Genoese fortresses still partially preserved. In the eastern part of Moneglia, the parish church of Saint Cross was built in 1130, but collapsed a few centuries later and was then rebuilt in the eighteenth century. Inside, there is a statue of the Immaculate, attributed to Maragliano, a Byzantine Crucifix that gave the church its name, and a Last Supper by the Cambiaso school. Inside the church there was preserved a precious jewellery box from the thirteenth century, assignable to the French goldsmith productions of Limoges, decorated with angels in glory closed in medallions of tendrils and leaves. Today, for safety reasons, the box is visible in the Diocesan Museum of Chiavari. Inside the fortress of Monleone, you can see a suggestive castle built at the beginning of the twentieth century that is inspired by the architectural lines drawn by Coppedè. Not far from the historic centre, the oldest ecclesiastical building of Moneglia, dedicated to Saint Lawrence, stands: a legend tells us that it was destroyed by the Lombards and later by Federico Barbarossa; rebuilt in 1100, it was dedicated to Saint Lawrence, in honour of the ancient links that the city had with Genoa.