Portovenere

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Portovenere (sometimes, in English, Porto Venere) is a town and comune (municipality) located on the Ligurian coast in the province of La Spezia. It comprises the three villages of Fezzano, Le Grazie and Portovenere, and the three islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto. In 1997 Portovenere and the villages of Cinque Terre were designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

View from the sea.

History

The ancient Portus Veneris is believed to date back to at least the middle of the 1st century BCE. It has been said that the name refers to a temple to the goddess Venus which was sited on the promontory where the church of Peter the Apostle now stands. The name has also been linked to that of the hermit Saint Venerius. In Roman times the city was mainly a fishermen community.

Statue of St. Peter in the omonymous church.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it became the base of the Byzantine fleet in the northern Tyrrhenian Sea, but was destroyed by the Lombards in 643 CE. Later, it was frequently the target of Saracen raids. First news about the existence of a castle date from 1113, and in 1161 the walls were erected. Portovenere became a fiefdom of a family from Vezzano before passing to Genoa in the early 12th century. In 1494 it suffered a devastating bombardment from the Aragonese fleet as part of their war with Genoa: the old part of the city subsequently decayed, leaving place to the devlopment of the new district (Borgo Nuovo, which existed from 1139) along the church of St. Peter.

The Doria Castle.

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Main sights

The Gothic church of Saint Peter, consecrated in 1198. It was built over a pre-existing 5th century Palaeo-Christian church, which had rectangular plan and semicircular apse. The new part, from the 13th century, is marked externally by white and black stripes.
The Romanesque church of Saint Lawrence, erected in 1098 by the Genoese. It probably occupies the site of ancient temple dedicated to Jupiter. The church was damaged by a fire in 1340 and by the Aragonese attack in 1494, and was further restored in 1582.
Doria Castle
Byron’s Grotta (now collapsed), from which in 1822 the English poet swam across the gulf to San Terenzo to visit Shelley in Lerici.

The medieval nucleus of Le Grazie is set around the 14th century Church of Our Lady of the Graces; nearby is a medieval convent, which once belonged to the Olivetans, and the remains of the 1st century BCE Roman villa of Varignano (finds from the recent excavations at the villa are held in the Antiquarium della Villa Romana del Varignano in Portovenere).

In Fezzano the medieval alleyways are noteworthy, along with the 1740 church of Saint John the Baptist and the recently restored Villa Cattaneo.

External links

[Official website] The site is largely in Italian, but pages in English include:
* [Image Gallery]
* [A welcome from the mayor]
[Unesco World Heritage entry]
[Pictures from Portovenere]

World Heritage Sites in Italy

Liguria · Communes of the province of La Spezia

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