SAN FRUCTUOSO DE CAPODIMONTE

The abbey is located in the bay of the same name, within the land and sea park of Monte Portofino, surrounded by a town almost uninhabited during the winter months. The first church was built, according to tradition, in the year 711 by the bishop of Tarragona Prospero, who took refuge here after the Arab invasion of Spain, to place the relics of San Fruttuoso, a martyr of the 3rd century, in the area known as the Old Church, where some remains of the building are actually located.

The current abbey was built in the mid-9th century and then destroyed by the Saracens and rebuilt in the 10th-11th centuries at the initiative of Otto I’s widow, Adelaide of Burgundy. Entrusted to the Benedictines in the same period, from the 12th century onwards it underwent several extensions and reconstructions, especially at the initiative of the Doria family, who used the monastery as a family tomb.

In 1467 the monastery was entrusted to a lay commission and it was the Doria family who mainly exercised it. The monastic presence ceased around 1570 and the building was inhabited by farmers who took care of the lands owned by the Doria, but they allowed the complex and its furniture to deteriorate. The recovery began at the end of the 17th century at the initiative of Abbot Camillo Doria and continued in the following two centuries until the end of the community, in 1885, when the abbey became the parish seat governed by the Doria Pamphili family.

Affected by a serious flood in 1915, the Italian State carried out a first intervention in 1933, but the complete restoration of the church and the monastery did not begin until 1983, with the family’s donation to the Italian Fund for the Environment. In particular, between 2001 and 2004 an important series of works affected the monastic church, the Doria tombs and the museum itinerary, bringing to light the ancient access to the church from the lower cloister and other medieval environments.

The current structure includes two churches. The medieval one, called ‘monastic’, consists of two rooms, the front of which presumably constituted the choir, and an apsidal room used as a chapel. The plaster and flooring date from the 10th century, while the crypt, used for the burial of abbots or initially the Doria family, dates from the 13th century.

The “public” church was built after the end of the monastic presence over the medieval one: built in Romanesque style in three naves, the main altar contains a silver urn containing the relics of the martyrs Fructuoso, Augurio and Eulogio, initially preserved in the sancta sanctorum located in the lower part of the abbey, which in turn constitutes the oldest nucleus of the settlement. The apse is built close to the rock, the middle Byzantine dome is adorned with 17 stone arches taken from the mountain and is crowned by the Nolar tower, built around the 10th century with a spherical and slightly oval cap, always following the Byzantine model. : It was then that the current octagonal structure with exposed pilasters was superimposed.

The cloister also has two levels: the upper one was built in the 12th century and rebuilt by the famous admiral Andrea Doria in the 16th century, providing it with cross-shaped roofs, Romanesque style capitals and columns of various origins; There is also the 10th century loggia. It is Romanesque in style. The lower level houses, in one part, the tombs of seven members of the Doria family who died between 1275 and 1305: they are built with alternating bands of white marble and gray stone, a characteristic Ligurian pattern, placed in rows on three sides of of the compartment and formed by masonry arches, simple or paired, mostly with epigraphs, topped by pointed arcosolios, supported by small marble columns with gabled roofs. Next to them are two other tombs, of which the identity of the deceased is unknown, and a Roman sarcophagus.

The museum illustrating the history of the abbey has been installed in the rooms of the monastery: in particular, several display cases display the table ceramics used by the monks during the 13th and 14th centuries, found in a warehouse during the restoration works of the monastery. . 1990s.

The structure of the building is completed with the loggia that projects towards the beach (created by the flood of 1915), commissioned in the 13th century by the Doria family precisely to use part of it as a burial place.

Roberto Bellini para URBS REGIA

– Edoardo Mazzino, San Fruttuoso di Capodimonte, Bordighera 1964
– Franco Dioli – Tina Leali Rizzi, Un monastero, una storia. San Fruttuoso di Capodimonte dalle origini al XV secolo, Recco 1985
– Luisa Cavallaro, San Fruttuoso di Capodimonte, una ‘storia’ nella pietra, «Benedictina», 33 (1986), pp. 361-393
– Franco Dioli – Tina Leali Rizzi, I Doria a San Fruttuoso: dal XVI al XIX secolo. Storie di pirati e di fortezze. Con note archeologiche, Genova 1987
– San Fruttuoso di Capodimonte. L’ambiente, il monumento, Milano 1990
– Sentieri sacri sul monte di Portofino. A cura di Colette Dufour Bozzo – Marina Cavana – Daniele Calcagno, Milano 2010, ad indicem
– Donatella Rita Fiorino, San Fruttuoso di Capodimonte. Studi, restauri, allestimenti museali, Genova 2012

Abbazia di San Fruttuoso

Abbazia di San Fruttuoso