San Giovanni di Prè
San Giovanni di Pré begins not as a single church, but as a compact complex that stacked two Romanesque churches atop a three‑storey commenda building. The lower church sits within the ensemble today known as the Commenda di Prè, an iron-link between medieval hospitaller life and Genoa’s maritime routes. The complex was begun around 1180 at the mouth of the S. Ugo stream, once open to the sea, where a prior church tied to the Holy Sepulchre stood from at least 1098, later passing to the Hospitallers after the Crusader era reshaped landholding in Italy. The commenda, or convent-hospital, fulfilled a double mission: it functioned as a maritime station for pilgrims heading to the Holy Land and, in later centuries, as a hospital and shelter for the city’s sick and indigent. …
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