Basilica dei Fieschi, Gothic minor basilica in Cogorno, Italy

The Basilica dei Fieschi is a Gothic church with a facade of alternating white marble and slate, featuring a large marble rose window and a pointed bell tower. Inside, three naves are supported by stone columns with decorated capitals.

Pope Innocent IV, born Sinibaldo Fieschi, founded the basilica in 1244; after Emperor Frederick II devastated the county during the Council of Lyon in 1245, rebuilding began in 1252. Ottobuono Fieschi, the pope's nephew and later Adrian V, consecrated it. It was listed as a national monument in 1860 and restored by Maurizio Dufour in the 19th century and again in the 1990s.

The 15th-century fresco in the lunette above the Gothic portal depicts the Crucifixion and shows both Pope Innocent IV, born Sinibaldo Fieschi, and his nephew Ottobuono Fieschi, later Pope Adrian V, who consecrated the church. The feast of the Madonna Addolorata falls on the second Sunday of May, and the triduum "della Riconoscenza" in early May recalls protection from a cholera epidemic in 1835.

The basilica stands on Piazza Innocenzo IV in the San Salvatore hamlet of Cogorno, next to the Palazzo Comitale and the church of San Salvatore il Vecchio on a hilltop. The forecourt is a risseu of small white, black and red pebbles forming a pattern that echoes the facade. Look for the Latin foundation inscription on the portal architrave and the 15th-century Crucifixion fresco in the lunette.

The bell tower is a square crossing tower topped by an octagonal pyramidal helm flanked by four corner pinnacles. Behind two tiers of quadrifora openings hang six bells in D-flat: the five largest cast by the Picasso foundry in Recco in 1905, the sixth recast at Avegno in 1977 by Enrico Picasso & Figli.