Description of the attraction
The Chapel of Sant Ampelio is a tiny church built on a rocky promontory overlooking the entrance to the resort town of Bordighera from the east. The cape itself bearing the same name - Saint Ampelia - is the southernmost cape of Liguria and all of Northern Italy.
According to legend, Saint Ampelius, patron saint of Bordighera, was a hermit who arrived in the city from the Theban desert in the 5th century and brought with him the seeds of a date palm. In Bordighera, Ampelius lived in a cave among the rocks.
Archaeologist Nino Lambolla called the chapel of Sant Ampelio "the palimpsest of ten centuries of history." The current Romanesque church building dates from the 11th century. It was once run by the powerful Benedictine abbey of Montmajor in Provence. In the 15th and 17th centuries, the building was partially changed, and in 1884 it was restored. The façade and the bell tower are modern buildings.
At the main altar of the church, you can see a 17th century statue of Saint Ampelius. In the crypt, with two apses and small oblique openings, there is a hewn stone block from La Turbie (the cliff overlooking the Principality of Monaco). According to legend, it was this stone that was the modest and very uncomfortable bed of the saint, on which Ampelius died in October 428. In 1140, the Republic of Genoa, wishing to punish the rebellious inhabitants of Bordighera, took the relics of the saint to the neighboring town of San Remo. There they were placed in the church of Santo Stefano, which was run by the Benedictine order. And in 1258, the relics of Ampelia were transported to Genoa, to the abbey of Santo Stefano - there Ampelius, a blacksmith by profession, began to be considered the patron saint of blacksmithing. Only in 1947, by the will of the Genoese Archbishop Giuseppe Siri, the relics of the saint were returned to Bordighera.
Ampelius returned to his homeland by water - it happened on August 16 of the same year. A solemn procession carried the sacred remains across the city to the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena, where they rest to this day.
On the same street, there is a monument to Queen Margherita, made by the sculptor Italo Griselli and installed in 1939.
