The Complex
The monastery complex of Santa Maria di Castello, close to the harbor area of the Molo, occupies the top of a hilly area of very ancient settlement: the stratified presence of pre-Roman, Roman and Byzantine fortifications, until the building, between the 9th and 10th centuries, of the bishop’s palace, connoted this area as the seat of military and religious power.
With the settlement around the 11th century of the Castello and Embriaci consortia, whose tower remains, the area also became the residence of important families. The presence in that nucleus of a temple, according to tradition founded in 658 by the Lombard king Aripertus, is first known through a document from 1049.
It is attested that in the first half of the 12th century the church was officiated by a college of canons, whose intense activity to increase the real estate nucleus through donations and purchases of areas is known. To this period dates the construction of the present church, with three naves covered with trusses, transept – on whose left arm stands the bell tower – and three apses, the work of antelamic masters.
The decrease in numbers and the slow decline attributable to the absenteeism of the canons led to a request by Doge Tommaso Campofregoso and the most influential families of the parish to Pope Eugene IV to entrust the church to the reformed Dominicans. The pope agreed, and on June 14, 1441, he suppressed the collegiate church, turning the church over to the friars and transferring to them the property and income of the collegiate church itself. This provoked the reaction of the canons, who for a year and a half, with the support of the archbishop of Genoa, Giacomo Imperiale, opposed the arrival of the Dominicans: the church was handed over to the friars only on November 13, 1442.
The different needs of the new community led to the creation of the monastery complex, the vast area of which was obtained from purchases and demolitions. Thanks to the munificence of the brothers Emanuele and Lionello Grimaldi-Oliva, the second cloister and sacristy were built between 1445 and 1452, the first cloister was started (completed between 1453 and 1462) and the sculptural and pictorial decoration was carried out, evidence of which remains in the Annunciation by Giusto of Ravensburg, signed and dated 1451, and in the frescoes on the vault of the lower loggia of the second cloister known as the Annunciation. The third cloister was erected between 1492 and 1513.
In the first cloister were the refectory, dormitories, kitchen and infirmary, in the second the chapter house, library, loggia for the use of the friars, spetiaria, and parlors.
From the second half of the 17th century, coinciding with a serious numerical and economic weakening of the Dominicans, alienations and transformations alternated, often due to the need to rent out areas of the monastery, while in the church the decoration of some chapels continued.
In the first half of the 19th century, the monastery was in a state of decay, which worsened in 1859 with the occupation by troops of the Sardinian-Piedmontese army and the expulsion of the friars as a result of the application of the Cavour-Rattazzi law that had suppressed religious corporations in 1855: partly forfeited by the state, the monastery was included in a building speculation program that was implemented in 1870 with the elevation of the first and third cloisters, which were converted into apartment buildings.
