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Toirano is very famous for hosting a complex of very interesting caves in its immediate hinterland. There is no speleology enthusiast who has never heard of the Toirano caves, which, moreover, are accessible and can be visited by everyone. In particular, the one object of the visit is the cave called "Basura". In our proposed itinerary around Toirano, in search of the ethnographic roots of our ancestors, we propose another cave, also located within the complex: it is the Cave of “Santa Lucia superiore” (Upper St Lucy). Reachable with an easy walk, the cave contains a hermitage dedicated to the Syracusan saint. Considering that it too has brought back evidence of human presence since the middle Paleolithic, it has been transformed into a place of worship since the 15th century. The sanctuary cavity is about thirty metres long. At the end of the sanctuary there is a raised altar, which in fact acts as an interruption with respect to the development of the cave which continues for another three hundred meters. This sanctuary is undoubtedly one of the most unique religious places in Liguria, and was located along one of those roads that, in addition to being traveled for material purposes, were crossed by pilgrims for confessional reasons. It is really curious to think about how the spread of the cult of the Syracusan Virgin and Martyr has reached this far, in this remote cave. Born in Syracuse in the third century and martyred under Diocletian, the body of the saint is currently kept in the church of St. Jeremiah and Lucy in Venice, after the Venetians stole her body during the Constantinopolitan sack of the fourth crusade. According to hagiographic reconstructions, it was General George Maniace who found the body in 1038 in Syracuse and sent it with all honours to the capital of the Empire.

Toirano

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