In the thirteenth century there was added to the building body with loggia towards the sea, by the Doria family of Genoa, who used an abbey hall for their burials. The upper cloister was rebuilt in the sixteenth century by Andrea Doria, while in 1562 they built the tower of square sighting that still dominates the bay.

The abbey was later abandoned and used as a dwelling. In 1933 it was restored by the state and in 1983 the Doria Pamphili donated buildings and land to the Fund for the Italian environment.

Description

Church

In the medieval church (called "monastic") it is accessed from the old sacristy, made in the sixteenth century cant. An apse room is used as a chapel. The building consists of two parts, one on the front part was meant probably choir for the monks. The plaster and flooring are of the tenth century and the crypt at the bottom, which was to house the remains of abbots or noble Doria, it was the thirteenth century, so almost coeval of the underground family tomb.

The church "public" was obtained by raising the medieval building only after the abandonment of the abbey by the monks. The altar holds a small silver hood that contains the relics of the martyrs Fruitful, Augury and Eulogio.

The apse, carved close to the rock, the average Byzantine dome decorated with seventeen precious stone arches of the mountain and the great octagonal particular tower are the reasons most interesting from an architectural point of the entire complex, whose roof is finished from slate roofing.

It closes the lower part of the inner sanctum Abbey, tiny compartment, the oldest settlement core, which is believed to have been used for the conservation and the veneration of relics.

Museum

In the halls of the monastery a renovation completed in the nineties has brought to light the ancient Roman structures, it is a museum dedicated to the history of the abbey. In several caskets they are exposed ceramic tableware, discovered in a vault of the monastery and of various geographical origins, used from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century by the monks.

The primary particular tower, considered among the most ancient architectural elements of Liguria, was built around the tenth century with spherical and slightly oval cap, according to the artistic canon of the Byzantines. Only later the structure was overlaid with a new octagonal tower with pilasters visible.

Cloister and Doria tomb

The upper cloister, built in the twelfth century, was almost completely rebuilt in the sixteenth century by the famous admiral Andrea Doria Oneglia. The cloister was endowed by cross covers, with use of Romanesque capitals and columns of different origin. The tenth-century loggia is also Romanesque and after the temporary closure during the restoration of 1933, has reopened to the public.

On the lower level of the cloister is the tomb of the Doria family, granted by the Benedictine monks. The noble graves - in which housed the bodies of seven members Doria deaths between 1275 and 1305 - are made of white marble and gray stone alternately, as in the traditional and typical Ligurian duotone. They are arranged in rows on the three sides of the compartment and constituted by arche masonry single or in pairs - largely with inscriptions - surmounted by arcosolia ogive, supported by small marble columns with a gabled roof.

In addition to the tombs of the seven members of the Doria family, there are two other tombs and a Roman sarcophagus of which you ignore the identity of the buried people.

Tower

The tower, named after Andrea Doria by his heirs, John, Andrew, and Pagano, was erected in August of 1562 along the road from the abbey to the fishing village into a steep staircase.