Savona, city of the Della Rovere family and Savona's Sistine Chapel
Savona in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries saw the rise to the papal throne of two of its citizens: Francesco della Rovere, known as Pope Sixtus IV, and his nephew Giuliano della Rovere viz. Pope Julius II. They were two great patrons and great urban planners, who promoted both in Rome and Savona important works. One thinks of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, commissioned by Sixtus IV and then later had it frescoed by Michelangelo, who was called to Rome by Pope Julius II. In Savona, too, Sixtus IV had a small Sistine Chapel as a funerary monument for his parents, and a few decades later Pope Julius called the artist John Mazone to decorate its interior. Among the pictorial works testifying to Priamar's magnificence, mention must be made of the Polyptych commissioned by Julius II for the ancient cathedral of Santa Maria del Priamar to Vincenzo Foppa and Ludovico Brea and now placed in the’Oratory of Our Lady of Castle.
The main stages of the’roveresque itinerary': the Monumental Complex of the Cathedral with the Sistine Chapel and the wooden Choir of Julius II, the Picture Gallery and the Oratory of Our Lady of Castello.
