San Siro di Struppa: A Romanesque Parish Church in Genoa
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Genoese
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page13 sections
History
San Siro di Struppa is a Roman Catholic church in Genoa, Italy, associated with the tradition that St. Syrus of Genoa was born in this part of the Val Bisagno. A church or chapel is traditionally believed to have existed here since the fifth century, soon after the death of Syrus, a fourth-century bishop and traditionally the patron saint of Genoa. The earliest documentary record, however, dates from 955. The church’s surviving form is chiefly Romanesque, a medieval style characterized by sturdy masonry, thick walls, round-headed openings, and restrained ornament.
Early religious center
In the Middle Ages, the church stood beside the road through the Val Bisagno. The route ran partway up the valley slopes to avoid flooding from the Bisagno stream and reached an important crossroads. One branch crossed the Creto Pass toward Montoggio and the Scrivia Valley, while another led toward the Trebbia Valley. The settlement nearby, at about 168 metres above sea level, was formerly part of the abbey’s holdings.
The church later became a parish church and, after 1000, a basilica. A second church near it was consecrated in 1025 through the initiative of the Genoese bishop Landulf II. It then became a Benedictine abbey, a monastery belonging to the Order of Saint Benedict, whose communities followed the Rule of Saint Benedict. After incorporating the parish church into the monastery, the monks built a third church. Historians identify the nearby Oratory of Sant’Alberto and Sant’Antonio Abate with this eleventh-century monastic building.
Medieval parish and rebuilding
By the late eleventh century, the Benedictines had left the abbey and the old parish church to the diocesan clergy and moved to Sant’Eusebio. The later history of the monastery itself is unclear, but San Siro continued to serve as a substantial parish center. In the medieval period, it had considerable revenues and received bequests from Genoese citizens. Its jurisdiction extended over six dependent rectories: San Cosma and Damiano, San Giovanni di Aggio, San Martino de Corsi, San Martino di Struppa, Sant’Eusebio, and Santa Maria di Molassana.
Until the fourteenth century, the wider area was known as Mollicciana, and the church was called San Siro de Mollicciana. Molassana and Struppa became separate administrative entities in the fifteenth century, and both were incorporated into Greater Genoa in 1926. Documents from 1125 already described the parish church as old. It was probably rebuilt during the first half of the twelfth century, a dating supported by its Genoese Romanesque character. The church was still listed as a parish church in the 1143 tithe register.
Alterations, damage, and restoration
The Romanesque structure remained largely intact until the end of the sixteenth century. It was then enlarged and altered in response to the reforms associated with the Council of Trent, the sixteenth-century Catholic council whose decisions influenced church layouts, furnishings, and liturgical practice. The high altar was enlarged, two side altars and a sacristy were added, the vault and apse were rebuilt, and the stone walls were covered with plaster and whitewash.
Further Baroque additions appeared during the seventeenth century. Austrian soldiers damaged and burned the church during the war of 1746–1747, after which additional restoration was required. In 1851, the triple-part windows of the bell tower were removed so that new bells could be moved outside the bell chamber. Despite maintenance during the middle of the nineteenth century, the building deteriorated and was closed to the public in 1900.
Radical restoration began in stages in 1921 and continued during the 1930s and 1950s before concluding in 1963. The work recovered Romanesque forms concealed by later alterations. Masonry vaults were removed, plaster was stripped from the walls, the original arrangement of the façade’s single-opening windows was reinstated, and the side aisles, apses, and bell tower were repaired. The tower’s triple-part windows were reconstructed, and the eighteenth-century altar was removed. In 1963, a new bronze door and marble altar were installed. Cardinal Giuseppe Siri consecrated the altar on 15 April that year. The surrounding village houses were later renovated while retaining their historic character, and the forecourt was repaved in 1988. The feast of St. Syrus is celebrated on 7 July.
Remains
Exterior structure
Façade
San Siro di Struppa is built from sandstone blocks laid in regular courses. Its exterior has little carved decoration apart from a line of hanging corbel arches beneath the eaves, continuing across the top of the façade and around the building. Two pilasters divide the façade in correspondence with the church’s three interior aisles. A simple central portal forms the entrance, above which is a central rose window restored during the twentieth-century work. The side sections contain two elongated single-lancet windows.
The façade entrance has a hammered copper door made by Ilario Cuoghi. Its panels depict the six patron saints of the Benedictine order. The door was fitted to the church’s original medieval hinges, linking the modern metalwork with the surviving fabric of the medieval entrance.
Bell tower
A square bell tower rises from the final bay of the right-hand aisle. It is 32 metres high and is capped by a pyramidal spire. The bell chamber now has triple-mullioned windows, meaning windows divided into three openings. These were restored during the twentieth-century reconstruction after nineteenth-century single-arched openings had replaced them. The tower contains six bells tuned to D-flat major.
Interior and furnishings
Nave, aisles, and apses
The interior consists of a central nave flanked by two side aisles. Two rows of short, sturdy columns separate the spaces, and the columns have undecorated spherical-cubic capitals. A cruciform pier at the end of the right-hand aisle supports the bell tower. Each aisle ends in its own semicircular apse.
The ceiling is formed by wooden roof trusses installed during the twentieth-century restoration in accordance with the original Romanesque arrangement. Their installation followed the removal of the later masonry vaults. The restoration also exposed the stone walls by taking away the plaster and renewed the side aisles and apses.
High altar and relic
The high altar was made by G. Raitano in 1963. Its marble frontal bears symbols of St. Syrus and had previously served as the lintel of a sixteenth-century portal from a Genoese palace. The marble forms the base of a niche that formerly held a relic of the saint.
The relic was an arm of St. Syrus, given to the church by Bishop Landulf I in 1025. It was kept in a valuable silver reliquary donated in 1629 by the patrician Giovanni Battista Lercari. The relic was stolen in 1979. Archbishop Giuseppe Siri later supplied a replacement relic that had previously been kept in the Cathedral of San Lorenzo.
Paintings and devotional works
The church’s principal artwork is the St. Syrus Polyptych, a multi-panel painting made in 1516 and restored in 1960. Formerly attributed to Teramo Piaggio, it is now attributed to Pier Francesco Sacchi, known as “the Pavese.” The central panel shows St. Syrus enthroned and crushing the Basilisk with his pastoral staff, while a Madonna and Child appears above him. In this scene, the legendary serpent-like monster represents the Arian heresy.
Eight side panels illustrate episodes from the saint’s life. They show his vocation, the restoration of a blackbird to life, the miracle of the ship, his visions, the healing of a possessed woman, the killing of the Basilisk, his death and the translation of his relics, and later miracles and devotion to him. A wooden processional statue shows St. Syrus blessing; the archpriest Antonio Paganini commissioned it in 1640.
The St. Placidus Triptych, made by Lino Schenal in 1963, presents the Sacred Heart of Jesus between Saints Maurus and Placidus. Cuoghi’s copper works from 1962–1963 include the Stations of the Cross panels, the bowl of the baptismal font, the tabernacle, and candlesticks for the altar of the Eucharistic reserve, the consecrated hosts kept for distribution outside the celebration of Mass.
Forecourt pavement
The forecourt has a characteristic 1988 risseu pavement, a patterned surface made from white and gray pebbles. It forms part of the later setting of the restored church and complements the historic village fabric around it.
