The crafts and art in Pieve di Teco are very famous. Works of wrought iron, forged by hand, sophisticated stained glass windows with gorgeous colors ... are the most valuable handicraft items created by the skillful hands of Pieve art masters. The furnishings and design of the jewels that can be found walking through the historic center of Pieve di Teco, in the workshops in the shadow of the monumental Gothic arches and doorways molded in stone, where once came from afar noiseless noise from hundreds of shoemakers hammers that are in the same tiny workshops used for the manufacture of indestructible shoes. The ancient technique, the only faint memory of which remains at present, is the manufacture of hand-made boots for hunting, mountaineering, climbing and skiing.
The arcades of these medieval porticos are curiously located at different levels, so that the houses of aristocratic families, who had the right to build higher porticoes, stand out among the houses of the rest of the population. Pieve di Teco is a very valuable village, whose origin dates back to the XII century, when the Marquises of Clavesis built a mansion on the foundation of the ancient Byzantium military camp Teisho, which, together with the noun plebs (central community), contributed to the name of the village. The actual village was built a century later, when the Lord of the castle granted the peasants the right to build a village near the oratory of St. John the Baptist. It was a strategic position to use trade between the Ligurian coast and Piedmont.
Soon Pieve di Teco became a rich home for numerous products: paper, shoes, soap, rope, cloth and leather. Commercial origin and vocation that would provide wealth and prosperity, as important artistic clients prove. The architect Gaetano Cantoni, an important figure of the Ligurian Lombard neo-classicism, was commissioned to design a new magnificent parish church: the Collegiate Church of St. John the Baptist. Work began in 1785, when the old Romanesque church was destroyed and completed in 1806.
Under the heavy dome of the basilica, there are works of art, such as the wooden crucifix of Francesco Schiaffino, the martyr of St. Sebastian Giulio Benso, a local painter (1601-1668), the Last Supper Domenico Piola and San Francesco da Paola, attributed to the hand of Luca Cabiaso. Until this time, the parish church was the fifteenth century Chiesa di Santa Maria della Ripa, which today is decontected, which has been keeping the bell tower from the 15th century. Where the river Armo meets Arrogna, the Sanctuary of the Madonna rises out of the mud, a late Baroque building, as its strange name confirms, in an area that was muddy due to the abundance of water. Other important monuments are the Hospital San Lazzaro with a beautiful fifteenth-century portal and the Convento degli Agostiniani, which has the largest monasteries in Western Liguria. A little higher, stretch the thick and fascinating forests of Cappuccini, with their ancient trees.
