Santissima Concezione, Church and shrine in Castelletto, Genoa, Italy.
Santissima Concezione is a Capuchin church and convent on Piazza dei Cappuccini, set on a raised churchyard reached by a stair and a pedestrian ramp. Its undecorated facade has a gabled roof and a large semicircular window; the single rectangular nave has five side chapels, three on the right and two on the left, with dark wooden furnishings against white walls.
The church and convent were commissioned in 1591 to give thanks for the end of the 1579 plague. The first stone was laid on 20 May 1593 by Archbishop Alessandro Centurione, and work finished in 1596. Suppressed under Napoleon in 1810, reopened in 1815, closed again in 1866, the complex returned to the Capuchins in 1934.
The church is also called dei Cappuccini or santuario del Padre Santo, after Francesco Maria da Camporosso, the Capuchin friar who lived in the convent for about forty years in the 19th century. His body is displayed for veneration in an octagonal domed chapel reached by a short corridor, in an urn by sculptor Max Forni supported by four bronze angels.
The church stands on Piazza dei Cappuccini, at the corner of Via Bertani and Via Mameli, just uphill from Piazza Corvetto and near the Villetta Di Negro park. The raised churchyard is reached by a staircase and a pedestrian ramp; between the first and second flights stands Carlo Rubatto's 1891 statue of the Padre Santo. The Padre Santo's chapel is entered through a short corridor off the left side of the nave.
In the corridor leading to the Padre Santo chapel stands the tomb of Father Umile da Genova (1898–1969), founder of the "Sorriso francescano" of Coronata, an institute for abandoned children opened in 1946. The chapel itself is octagonal with a dome, and the urn by sculptor Max Forni is borne by four bronze angels.
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