Marola and St. Vito's Church

At the start of western shore along the road to Porto Venere, stands the old village of Marola, whose representatives had already been recorded in documents dating back to 1235 dealing with the re-building of a very ancient church dedicated to the Virgin and Saint Vito.
In reality St. Vito’s church at Marola is a recent building, consecrated in 1884, but heir to an important extremely ancient place of Christian devotion cancelled by the needs imposed by the Naval Arsenal.
The fact that the document dated 1235 already mentioned reconstruction makes you realize that the church had been founded in far more ancient times; this is supported by numerous factors, the most evident being the archaeological finds discovered from time to time during the great Naval Arsenal construction works. In fact a large number of finds came to the surface in the summer of 1862 during excavation works for the timber wharve. Agostino Falconi, who was mistakenly convinced that the Roman city Tigullia once stood here, immediately reported to Domenico Chiodo the director of the Arsenal works. Many objects were still emerging in 1864, during the 80’s and again in 1914, partly donated to the La Spezia Civic Museum and in part, unfortunately lost even though some information can be had of them from plates drawn up by the Naval Engineering corps. The surviving objects are now exhibited in the archaeological museum in St George castle.
The best part of these archaeological finds in reality dates back to the Roman times in a broad spectrum of time starting from the Republican period (III-II century B.C.) to the early-Christian period (V-VII century A.C.), demonstrating that this site had been used continually, probably always for cultural reasons first linked with pagan rites and then for Christian worship, during the Middle Ages.
As we said, unfortunately the needs of the Naval Arsenal cancelled out this building and the site where it stood in 1861: it was therefore decided to move the church a little more towards the hills, at first in a building later becoming a school near to the road and then where it now stands.
The two large pilaster capitals, with three rows of acanthus leaves, walled in at the door, which some experts believe are from the Roman Imperial times (I do not personally think so, they seem to be more renaissance to me) and the relics of Saint Vito, donated to the community by Giovanni Maria Della Torre, Capitan of the Genoese Republic, in 1702 are worthy of note. The worshipped relics are preserved in the original recently restored XVIII century tomb.