The parish church of San Matteo, built between 1754 and 1783, dominates the seafront of Laigueglia and is the principal monument of the village. The facade is a fine example of late Ligurian baroque, flanked by two slender campaniles whose domes are decorated with brightly glazed yellow and blue tiles. From the beach the church reads as a single broad composition — twin towers, a curving central facade, white walls against the green hillside.
Inside, the church is unexpectedly rich for so small a town. A sixteenth-century marble shrine of the Madonna sits in the south chapel; canvases by Genoese baroque painters Bernardo Castello and Bernardo Strozzi hang in the side aisles; and a seventeenth-century carved wooden choir survives in the adjoining oratory of Santa Maria Maddalena. The whole interior was restored in the 1990s and is well lit. Open mornings and late afternoons; closed during siesta.