Varazze

History

Main sights

• Romanesque church of San Nazario e Celso. The façade is from 1870.
• Church of San Domenico. It includes Sienese school frescoes and a 16th-century polyptych. Notable is the cloister.
• Church of Sant'Ambrogio. It has a Romanesque façade and a campanile in Gothic-Romanesque style with three orders of mullioned windows. In the interior are a polyptych by Giovanni Barbagelata and a panel by Luca Cambiaso with the Madonna and Sts. John the Baptist and Francis.
• Church of Santa Maria in Latronorio, in the frazione Invrea. A pointed portal remains of the original 12th-century edifice. The interior is home to a large 13th-century fresco.
• Eremo del Deserto, in the woodland towards the Ligurian Apennine. It is in Baroque style, being built in the 18th century, with a large wall measuring and including a wood and isolated cells of the monks.
• Church of San Donato, from the 5th or 9th century, but mostly rebuilt in the 19th century.
• Remains of the medieval walls

Twin towns — sister cities

• Palmi, Italy

  Notable people

• Jacobus de Varagine, Italian chronicler, archbishop of Genoa and author of the Golden Legend.
• Francesco Cilea, opera composer, lived the last years of his life in Varazze, where he was Honorary Citizen.
• Lelio Basso, anti-fascist, politician and journalist.
• Raimondo Spiazzi theologian, advisor to Pius XII and mariologist, lived the last years of his life in Varazze.