Mazzini, Garibaldi and the Caruggi: Genoa Cradle of the Risorgimento

The Dawn of a Nation in the Caruggi

There is a fascinating paradox in Genoa’s history, a contradiction that makes this city infinitely more complex than it appears at first glance. For centuries, the Superba was the undisputed capital of pragmatism. The Genoese were bankers, merchants, navigators, ruthless calculators who financed empires and weighed every political move on the scales of commercial interest. Yet, when Italy was merely a geographical expression divided into kingdoms and duchies subjugated to foreign powers, it was precisely in these shadowy caruggi that the most romantic, idealistic and visionary movement in our history was born: the Risorgimento.

To understand this transformation, you must imagine the atmosphere that permeated Genoa at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The glorious Maritime Republic, which had defended its independence for nearly seven centuries, had been erased with a stroke of a pen. First came the Napoleonic upheaval, then the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which inflicted the supreme affront: gifting Genoa and Liguria to the Kingdom of Sardinia, to the Savoys. For the Genoese, accustomed to having no masters but the sea, to become subjects of a dynasty considered mountain-dwelling and backward was an intolerable humiliation. Discontent simmered in the porticoes of Sottoripa, in the port taverns, in noble salons. Genoa was a pressure cooker, ready to explode. And in this climate charged with resentment and salt air, the city stopped calculating and began to dream.

Giuseppe Mazzini, the Dreamer Dressed in Mourning

If there is a place where Italy began to take shape in the mind of one man, it is not a battlefield, but a stately palace in the heart of Genoa’s historic center. On Via Lomellini, an elegant and narrow caruggio in the heart of the city, where historic palaces such as Palazzo Lomellini-Dodero look out, Giuseppe Mazzini was born on June 22, 1805. Son of a physician and a deeply religious and rigorous mother, Maria Drago, young Giuseppe grew up breathing the air of a caged city.

Legend, fueled by Mazzini himself in his autobiographical writings, has it that the spark struck in April 1821. Young Giuseppe, not yet sixteen years old, was taking a walk with his mother and a family friend on Strada Nuova (now Via Garibaldi) and then toward the ancient church of the Nunziata. There he encountered refugees from the failed Piedmontese uprisings, defeated men desperately seeking passage to flee into exile. A tall man, with a fierce and desperate gaze, approached them asking for funds “for the exiles of Italy.” That encounter was a lightning bolt. From that day on, Mazzini decided to dress himself permanently in black, in mourning for a homeland that did not yet exist but was already bleeding.

Mazzini was not a military man, not a general. He was an intellectual, a journalist, a thinker endowed with an almost magnetic charisma. His intuition was revolutionary: he understood that secret societies like the Carboneria, with their complex rituals and elitist structure, were destined to fail. Independence could not be the affair of a few nobles or soldiers; it had to become a civil religion, a popular movement. Thus, in 1831, during his exile in Marseille (after being arrested in Genoa and imprisoned in the fortress of Priamar in Savona), he founded Young Italy.

“In the name of God and Italy. In the name of all the martyrs of the holy Italian cause, fallen under the blows of tyranny, foreign or domestic… I, believer in the mission entrusted by God to Italy, and in the duty that every man born Italian has to contribute to its fulfillment… give my name to Young Italy, an association of men believing in the same faith, and I swear to dedicate myself entirely and forever to constituting Italy as a Nation One, Independent, Free and Republican.”

— Giuseppe Mazzini, opening of the Oath of Young Italy, 1831

The Echo of Young Italy and the Genoese Uprisings

But how did Mazzini’s ideas reach Genoa, closely watched by Piedmontese police? They arrived by sea, hidden in the double bottoms of sailors’ trunks, concealed among bales of cotton or crates of spices. The Port of Genoa, with its incessant bustle of ships, dock workers, stevedores and captains from all over the world, was the perfect place for the smuggling of ideas. The pamphlets of Young Italy were printed clandestinely and distributed in back rooms, in pharmacies, in masonic lodges.

Genoa became the operational laboratory of Mazzinism. Here insurrections were organized, funds were collected, leaflets were printed. The city paid an extremely high price for this role. In 1833, an attempted insurrection was discovered and bloodily suppressed by Piedmontese authorities. Arrests, summary trials and executions followed. Mazzini himself was condemned to death in absentia. But the seed was already planted. The idea of a united and republican Italy had infected an entire generation of young Genoese and Ligurians, willing to sacrifice everything for an ideal. If you walk today through the alleyways around Piazza Banchi or toward the Molo, try to imagine the nocturnal meetings by candlelight, the rustle of secretly printed paper, the anxiety of military patrols’ footsteps on the pavement.

Giuseppe Garibaldi: the Sea, the Port and Action

If Mazzini was the mind, the pen and the soul of the Risorgimento, pure, fearless and overwhelming action had another name, indissolubly linked to Genoa and its sea: Giuseppe Garibaldi. Born in Nice (then under Savoyard rule but culturally and linguistically connected to Liguria), Garibaldi was first and foremost a sailor. He had learned to navigate on Ligurian leudi, knew the winds of the Mediterranean better than anyone else, and Genoa was his home port.

It was precisely in Marseille, in 1833, that the young merchant captain Garibaldi encountered Mazzini’s ideas for the first time, when he was already in exile. In that city, drawing closer to the republican doctrines of Young Italy, Garibaldi embraced the cause of Italian unity and participated in the failed insurrectional uprising of 1834. Like Mazzini, he too was condemned to death and forced to flee, beginning his epic in South America that would make him the Hero of Two Worlds. But the destiny of Garibaldi and that of Genoa were meant to intersect again for the most audacious act of the entire Risorgimento.

In the spring of 1860, Genoa was a city in ferment. The cafés around Piazza De Ferrari and Via Carlo Felice (today Via XXV Aprile) were filled with volunteers who had arrived from all over northern Italy. There were students, workers, artisans, doctors, veterans of the wars of independence. Everyone whispered the same name: Garibaldi. An expedition was being prepared to free southern Italy from Bourbon rule. Cavour’s Savoy government pretended not to notice, barely tolerating that gathering of turbulent patriots in the most restless city of the kingdom.

The rocks of Quarto and the night that changed history

The night between May 5 and 6, 1860 is one of those nights that define the destiny of a nation. Step back mentally from the historic center and imagine yourself to the east, in the village of Quarto. At that time it was not a residential neighborhood of Genoa, but a small settlement of fishermen and stately villas overlooking a rocky and wild coast. The air was mild, the sea calm but swept by a light breeze. On the dark rocks, barely illuminated by the moon, about a thousand men had gathered. They spoke dozens of different dialects, but many, very many, were Ligurian. They wore bourgeois clothes, old patched uniforms, and the iconic red shirts.

The wait was nerve-wracking. The plan called for a commando led by the Genoese Nino Bixio to seize two steamships of the Rubattino company, the Piedmont and the Lombardy, in the port of Genoa and bring them to Quarto to board the volunteers. The hours passed. Garibaldi scanned the horizon in the darkness, the tension was palpable. If the police had intervened, or if the ships had not arrived, the expedition would have ended before it began, in a disastrous mass arrest.

Finally, in the depths of night, the dark shapes of the two steamships appeared offshore. The rowing boats ferried back and forth between the rocks and the ships, loading men, antiquated rifles and hopes. When dawn began to lighten the sky above the promontory of Portofino, the two steamships set course southward, toward Marsala. The Expedition of the Thousand had begun. Genoa, once again, had provided the stage, the men, the ships and the audacity to change history.

In the footsteps of heroes: Risorgimento sites today

If your journey to Genoa is also a journey through time, the city offers you the opportunity to touch this extraordinary history firsthand. We recommend you begin your exploration right from Via Lomellini. At number 11, in the palazzo where the Apostle of Unity was born, you will find today the magnificent Risorgimento Museum, also known as the Mazzini Institute. Don’t expect a dusty museum: it is a place charged with emotion. Here you can see the guitar that Mazzini played in exile in London (music was his great consolation), his letters full of ink, period weapons, Garibaldian uniforms and even the original tricolor that flew during the insurrections. It is a total immersion in nineteenth-century idealism.

From the city center, you can take a bus or train heading east and get off at Quarto dei Mille. On the terrace overlooking the sea, right above the rocks from which the volunteers departed, stands an imposing bronze monument inaugurated in 1915. The work, created by Eugenio Baroni, does not depict triumphant heroes, but tense, almost suffering figures pushing forward toward the sea and their destiny. Descend onto the rocks, breathe in the salt air, and try to imagine the darkness of that May night. It’s an experience that will make you see the Ligurian Sea with different eyes.

Finally, an unmissable secular pilgrimage awaits you in the Bisagno valley. Staglieno Monumental Cemetery, a true open-air museum of nineteenth-century sculpture, houses the remains of many protagonists of that era. At the top of a hill stands the mausoleum of Giuseppe Mazzini, a solid neoclassical temple carved into the rock, austere and powerful like his thought: in the crypt, his embalmed remains rest in a marble sarcophagus, surrounded by republican flags that accompanied the coffin during his 1872 funeral. All around the mausoleum extends the so-called “Thousand Grove,” where various martyrs of the unification cause and other distinguished figures are buried. Along the tree-lined avenues of Staglieno you will also find the tombs of Nino Bixio, Michele Novaro (the composer of the Hymn of Mameli, who was Genoese), and dozens of Garibaldians, recognizable by the bronze medallions portraying them in red shirts.

A Legacy Carved in Stone and Soul

The story of Mazzini, Garibaldi, and the Risorgimento movements is not just a closed chapter in schoolbooks. It left an indelible imprint on the character of the city. That intolerance of imposed authority, that rough pride, that capacity for sudden and powerful idealistic bursts are still part of Genoa’s soul. The Superb City demonstrated that behind its facade of a reserved mercantile city beat a heart capable of inflaming an entire nation.

Exploring this Genoa means walking in balance between the greatness of the past and the vibrancy of the present. To fully experience this atmosphere, we suggest you immerse yourself in the caruggi, lose yourself among the medieval squares and Renaissance palaces, and use our Genoa guide to discover every secret corner. And if you desire a welcoming refuge after a day spent following the footsteps of history, you can book now your stay. Our residences in the heart of the city are ready to welcome you. If history captivates you and Genoa is calling to you, we are here to make you feel not simply tourists, but part of this thousand-year-old story.