The Oratory in the centre of the Old Town which has changed use over time

The Oratory of San Sebastiano, located in a picturesque and evocative corner of the Pigna, was built in 1508 to fulfill the vow made by the community of Sanremo on January 20th 1502 to Saint Sebastian, protector against the plague, for having miraculously preserved the city from the severe plague that in that year had scourged the entire western part of Liguria.

The construction of the new oratory, built inside the Praetorian Palace, which still has the coat of arms of a Genoese podestà, of the city of Genoa and of Sanremo, with access from the public loggia, was made possible by the sale, made on 23 January 1509 by the Provost of San Siro Pietro Gioffredo and Canon Girolimo Gaudo, in the name of the Chapter of the collegiate church, to the citizens Gio Batta Fabiano and Lorenzo Anselmo, of an open and open house to adapt it as a place of prayer in honour of Saint Sebastian the martyr for the total sum of 152 Genoese lire.

The choice of the site on which to erect the new oratory fell particularly on the perimeter of the ancient city walls, so as to raise the sacred building with a system of mighty vaults over the so-called vallum, a sort of defensive valley located near the medieval gate of Santo Stefano.

The natural conformation of the place inevitably conditioned the architectural structure of the oratory, consisting of a rectangular plan joined along the short sides to the building fabric. The entrance was therefore placed approximately at the centre of the only longitudinal wall that could be used from the outside, made porticoed and overlooking Piazza dei Dolori, while the interior spaces maintained the traditional longitudinal layout with the high altar on the short side of the building.

In 1532 the praetor Lorenzo Fornari had the praetorian palace restored, as attested by an inscription engraved on a marble plaque, found in the foundations of the oratory of San Sebastiano by the then chaplain of the abbot church Antonio Ameglio, who then had it walled up in the sacristy in front of the entrance door of the sacred building, which, however, already at the end of the 16th century was beginning to show clear signs of structural precariousness.

In 1762 the oratory became the seat of the confraternity of the Madonna dei Dolori, hence the name "Dei Dolori", and since 1770 also that of the Misericordia, an association of lay people who had taken on the burden of assisting the wounded in hospitals, the plague victims and those condemned to death, as well as accompanying the deceased to the cemetery.

Around 1770 the interior was richly decorated by the porter Maurizio Carrega (1737 - after 1819), followed by his fellow-citizen Luigi Varese (1825-1889), who, between 1855 and 1860, created the sequence of canvases painted with the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, among which the canvas depicting the Ascent to Calvary stands out.

Behind the high altar there is a painting depicting the Mysteries of the Madonna, donated to the oratory in 1860 by the Gismondi family, while the wooden balustrade of the organ, inserted in a characteristic orchestral stage, preserves a tempera with a view of the city of the early eighteenth century, in which the bell tower of San Siro is depicted in the ancient Romanesque style surmounted by the spire, which would have been demolished in 1754 by order of the Genoese authorities to punish the city that had rebelled the year before against the government of the Republic.

The oratory has a single nave and is flanked by a light spire bell tower leaning against a neighbouring house that dates back to an earlier period.

The current decoration along the walls stands out particularly in the pilasters that rhythm the interior with their reliefs, holding up a long frieze.
Numerous details have also been gilded, presumably during the 19th century.

Above the entrance door of the oratory is a slab of slate depicting the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, which underwent careful restoration in July 1999 by the city Leo Club and flanked by the one carved with the pierced Sacred Heart surrounded by angelic figures.
During the last World War the oratory had to suffer the greatest damage among those suffered in its long history.

On the night between the 16th and 17th of April 1945, in fact, after a useless attempt of theft through a window of the rectory of the little church of the Madonna del Borgo, a band of fascists set fire to its wooden superstructures, which were completely destroyed, while the rest of the building was fortunately saved from total destruction by a fire department. During the inauspicious episode the rectory, the sacristy and most of the sacred furnishings of the oratory, which would be restored after the end of the war, were unfortunately reduced to ashes.

It is interesting the presence of an engraved plaque of 1642 next to the entrance door, on which some diligent municipal official glued a number of houses, without caring what it took away from the history of Sanremo, which testifies the lack of respect for the people of Sanremo.
against the strict laws imposed on the city by the Genoese government.

In fact, the inscription warns against urinating or leaving garbage under the portico leading to the palace, under penalty of a fine of four Genoese lire, which was particularly onerous at the time. It was also warned that anonymous complaints would also be followed up in order to further exacerbate possible tensions between the families of Sanremo, a situation which was very much welcomed by the Genoese authorities in order to better govern the city.

Finally, it should be remembered that on 18th May 1538 Pope Paul III paused briefly in prayer inside the oratory before going to the nearby Manara house, where he spent the night before his departure to Nice to attend the signing of a ten-year truce between Charles V and Francis I.

(source texts: Andrea Gandolfo and others; source images: personal archives)