Christ of the Abyss

In 1947, Dario Gonzatti — one of the first Italians to dive with self-contained scuba gear — died during an expedition off this stretch of the Ligurian coast, between Camogli and Portofino. His friend Duilio Marcante, who organized Italy's early diving clubs, wanted a memorial that divers themselves could visit, which meant it couldn't go on a clifftop or in a church. It had to go underwater.

Marcante commissioned the sculptor Guido Galletti, who cast a 2.5-metre bronze Christ with arms raised — not in the fixed pose of a crucifix, but open and upward, as if rising to meet the surface. The statue was lowered onto the seabed at San Fruttuoso on 22 August 1954, at a depth of roughly 17 metres, close to where Gonzatti had died. Bronze corrodes visibly in seawater, and decades of patina and marine growth have since given the figure a greenish, weathered texture that no foundry finish could have produced — the sea has effectively kept working on the sculpture long after Galletti put down his tools.

The idea outlived its original context. Divers still descend on the statue every August for a small underwater ceremony, and the same design — sometimes literal copies cast from Galletti's mould — has since been set up in Grenada and off Key Largo in Florida. San Fruttuoso's is the original, and the reason it sits at diving depth rather than on the shore above is the whole point: it was built for an audience that would have to hold its breath to see it.

Getting there

6 km from Rapallo. Genoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA) is about 29 km away.