Un Convento con una relativamente breve storia coventuale

History of the Convent

One of the most evocative buildings for the imagination and interest of the historian is certainly the one on the hill of the Costa.
The first evidence of his presence is due to the cartographic realization of Sanremo is due to Matteo Vinzoni to whom the Senate of Genoa gave the task of drawing the map of all the cities of the Riviera di Ponente and their immediate hinterland. Given the plague epidemics in nearby Marseille, Genoa's Public Health Committee, concerned about the danger of spreading the contagion, wanted to be able to arrange the urban layout of the coastal towns and their direct or indirect access routes.

Thus, around 1745, Vinzoni also designed the layout of Sanremo, even if it was a bit fanciful due to the difficulties posed by the Sanremo people, who were always suspicious of Genoese intrusions.
However, in the highest part of it you can see the sanctuary of the Madonna della Costa and the Fort that the Genoese destroyed in 1753, as well as the "conventus P .P.S. Agustini". 

The following is known about the building. On the 18th February 1645 the Councillor Francesco Palmaro presented to the People's Parliament of Sanremo a petition written to him by the Provincial Father of the Augustinians of the convent of S. Nicola da Tolentino in Genoa in which he expressed his wish to found a church and a monastery in the territory of Sanremo at his own expense.
The Parliament gave a positive opinion on the condition that the expenses and maintenance did not affect the municipal budget, under accepted conditions, it gave its approval indicating the "Palma Soprana district" as a suitable location. In 1647 also came the permission of the Bishop of Albenga and the papal authorities.
On 8th April 1648 Father Gio Andrea da Genova, Provincial of the Augustinians, after having completed all the bureaucratic procedures and obtained all the permits, started the practical implementation.
However, opposition immediately arose from the Friars of the Reformed Franciscan Friaries, who in 1626 succeeded the Observants in running the convent of Santa Maria della Consolazione (later Santa Maria degli Angeli) and the Capuchins who made formal protests and appeals to the higher authorities. It is known that there was always jealousy between religious orders for the establishment of a new monastery. These appeals were overcome thanks to the intervention of the higher authorities, sanctioned by the sentence of 15 May 1648 which rejected the appeals and declared the building permit valid for the Augustinians.
As far as we know, the first stone was laid on 26th July 1644 and when the construction was completed, in 1651, the Nicolite friars installed themselves there.

The Nicolite Fathers, who, as they were usually called by the people, already resided in Sanremo since 1647, when the construction of their convent had not yet begun, had begun their work of religious assistance and preaching, attracting many sympathies.
In January 1648 the Sanremo Parliament asked and obtained permission from the bishop to have them preached in San Siro and in the following decades we often find them chosen as preachers of Lent in San Siro instead of the Capuchin Fathers who had been preferred until that time.
In 1675, when a wall near the church of the Madonna della Costa fell due to the rain, the Nicolite friars took charge of repairing the area, building a road, with the financial help of the Municipality of 400 lire, to facilitate access to their convent and the church of the Madonna della Costa. It seems that the project was well executed.
It is very likely, however, that the work went on for a long time, because work on this road has been talked about for over a decade.
However, the good relations between the Nicolites and the people of Sanremo ceased on 14 June 1753, during the so-called "Sanremo revolution" against Genoa.
A group of Genoese soldiers, repelled from the coastal area while trying to enter the city, headed towards the heights of the Madonna della Costa, up to the Nicolites' convent, and expected to meet resistance for the conquest of the castle and the gate of Santa Maria, whose possession meant they had the city in their hands. So instead it was not, they found the doors open and few soldiers so it was easy for them to enter the city.
The common voice at that time was that (it is not known whether rightly or wrongly) the friars were blamed for treason because «this site found itself unguarded, because it was confided to a pusillanimous commander; fleeing, they kept almost all the villagers behind it ».  
In reality, as Nilo Calvini pointed out, the friars did not take part in the action and the place was abandoned because almost all the men, disorganized and without a central command, rushed to San Rocco attracted by a shooting. The four remaining soldiers, accompanied by the banner of Our Lady called 'Viva Maria', when one of them was wounded, had no choice but to surrender.
The most important defence of San Remo was so easily won; the city would soon become prey to the abuse and violence of Pinelli.
After this (fake) episode and after a few years of grama life, opposed by the population and, it seems, by other religious, the Nicoliti friars abandoned the convent they had erected and left the city.
Among the most important works following that period was the transformation, during 1834-35 by the Genoese architect Nicolò Canale, of the seventeenth-century convent of St. Nicholas for use as a seminary.

Additional note

In the 18th century, but also later, there were a fair number of lepers in Sanremo, the result of maritime traffic with the East or descendants of sick people landed "in antiquo" from some Saracen vessel and abandoned on the nearby coasts.
During the night it happened that these unhappy people took refuge wherever they could and the sight of the lepers wandering and begging through the streets of the city was not very edifying, so much so that King Charles Albert stopped in San Remo on the occasion of one of his trips to Nice, The building was moved to pity so as to donate a conspicuous sum for the modification of the building by adding a wing to the convent in 1853 to use it, thanks to the Piedmontese architect Ernesto Camous in the leper colony, to house and care for these unhappy people.
Later, in 1858, Vittorio Emanuele II, having become insufficient the old Napoleonic hospital located in the old convent next to the Church of the Angels, had all the rest of the building used as a hospital and handed it over to the Mauritian Order.

Sanremo was thus endowed with a civic hospital that at that time could be defined as grandiose: see the elegance of the 18th century atrium with its arches resting on high and solemn stone columns and the monumental doors that harmoniously combine in their style the grandeur of the "neoclassical" and the solidity of the "Genoese".

To symbolise the disciplinary rigidity of the hospital regulations, a complicated overlapping of boxes at the back and sides of the chapel served to separate, even during sacred services, the staff from the sick of the various wards and the two sexes.
The hospital remained for almost a century in that location at the foot of the historic Sanctuary of the Madonna della Costa, which from the top of a hill dominates the old town and the whole gulf, and near the place where the ancient Castle, destroyed by the Genoese, stood.
In 1934 it was transferred to the hospital just finished, but inaugurated by Vittorio Emanuele III in 1936 on the nearby hill historically called "tip of France", at the same altitude, in a modern building with separate pavilions.
After the transfer of the hospital, the building remained almost unused or occasionally used to house various bodies or even transformed into barracks.
There was also a proposal to set up a prison there to replace the one that is still located in the fort of S. Tecla near the port, which fortunately was promptly rejected.

Considering the availability of the premises, one of our fellow citizens, a scholar of local history and traditions, Carlo Alberto, did his best to convince the Municipal Administration and the successor of Blessed Don Orione, Don Sterpi, to exchange the premises of the San Romolo College in Corso Garibaldi for the convent building that was to pass to the Opera Don Orione.

Unfortunately, during the negotiations, the selling body (Pie Opere Riunite) preferred to sell the premises in exchange for cash, on the basis of an expert evaluation.
The Carlo Alberto initiative was due to the suggestion of his brother-in-law Don Biagio Marabotto who represented the Opera Don Orione in Poland at the time.
Thus on 12 March 1943, in a dramatic period of our history, the "Piccolo Cottolengo di Don Orione" was inaugurated, destined to host the dispossessed, the handicapped and the elderly.
Inside the grandiose building there is a nineteenth-century painting by Angelo Capisani, depicting the 'Savior begged by Saints Maurizio and Lazzaro' and a painting by the Sanremo painter Lorenzo Martini.
Moreover, in the room that used to be the chapel of the women's ward, a crucifix by Anton Maria Maragliano (Genoa 1664-1739), a well-known wooden sculptor, author of crucifixes, processional boxes, altar groups and crib figures, is worth a visit and attention. His sculptures can be found in many churches in Genoa and the two Rivieras.
The crucifix of Sanremo is remarkable for the anatomy of the muscles of the chest and abdomen in an attitude of torsion in the spasm of suffering which is also vividly visible from the expression on the face.
We can suppose that the crucifix was left in the chapel by the Nicolite friars during their rather hasty transfer to Genoa and that, when the hospital was set up in the building, it was displayed in the main aisle to inspire and comfort the patients.
After the first difficulties (our country was still at war), the "flower of the precious death of Don Orione" (as expressed in the papal message that accompanied the inauguration) had to grow rapidly and open all the petals of its corolla.

The building gradually improved in its interior architecture and equipment, adapting more and more to functional requirements.

Today it can accommodate both male and female patients.

It can be said that in these fifty years of life a real river of suffering humanity has been housed within these walls in an atmosphere of charity, love and efficiency.

(sources: texts elaborated by "Il Mauriziano di Sanremo" by F.Bronda and C.Matricardi ed.1993, "Sanremo" cit., "Sanremo Storia ed Anima di una città" cit.; images from private archives)