Finalborgo historical timeline

Storia

Finalborgo è una capitale superata dai propri sobborghi. Fu cinta di mura alla fine del XII secolo come sede di un marchesato, e un marchesato lo ha retto per quattrocento anni; poi la dinastia finì, arrivò la Spagna, Genova lo comprò, e il paese si zittì mentre i villaggi di pescatori sulla costa sotto diventavano una località balneare. È l’essere stato lasciato da parte ad averlo salvato. Le mura, le porte, le due piazze e le facciate dipinte dei palazzi ci sono ancora, e così un campanile gotico ottagonale a cui hanno demolito la chiesa da sotto.

Cronologia

1128 Il regolamento del dazio di Genova elenca gli abitanti di Finale come esportatori di lana e canapa: la prima traccia documentaria del commercio che sta dietro al culto di san Biagio, protettore dei cardatori di lana, tuttora patrono di questo borgo.
1162 Il 10 giugno Enrico I Del Carretto, detto il Guercio, riceve da Federico Barbarossa l’investitura della marca di Savona, ereditata dal padre Bonifacio del Vasto. Savona e Noli si rendono indipendenti; i suoi domini vengono suddivisi fra i due figli.
fine XII secolo Enrico II Del Carretto comincia a usare il titolo di marchese del Finale e cinge di mura il nucleo urbano, dando origine al burgus Finarii, cioè a questo paese. La cinta difende est, sud e ovest; lo sperone del Becchignolo chiude il nord.
1261 La chiesa di San Biagio compare per la prima volta in un documento scritto. Vi era annesso un ricovero per malati di cui non resta alcun rudere; la chiesa stessa stava allora dall’altro lato del torrente Aquila.
1359 I Del Carretto fondano il convento di Santa Caterina e lo usano come prestigiosa e monumentale area sepolcrale. Dal 1381 è abitato dai frati domenicani, e il complesso sta ancora attorno ai suoi due chiostri.
1372 San Biagio viene ricostruita entro le mura, con conclusione nel 1375, in stile gotico. Il suo campanile ottagonale è quello in piedi oggi, e parte dell’abside sopravvive nello spazio fra la chiesa successiva e le mura.
1462 Il marchese Giovanni I Del Carretto ristruttura il Palazzo del Tribunale, affidando l’opera a Giorgio Molinari, che ne modifica interni ed esterni con una nuova scala e bifore intramezzate. L’edificio esisteva almeno dai primi anni del Trecento e la facciata porta ancora i segni di entrambi.
1500 Vengono edificati i due chiostri comunicanti di Santa Caterina, conclusi nel 1530, per volere del cardinale Carlo Domenico Del Carretto. Sono l’opera rinascimentale che si attraversa per arrivare al museo.
1602 I Del Carretto cessano di governare il Marchesato di Finale dopo quattro secoli, e il territorio passa sotto il dominio asburgico fino al 1713. Il marchesato diventa uno scalo indispensabile per trasferire le truppe spagnole nel milanese senza il permesso di Genova e le merci senza gabelle: e il Finale ne ricava un grande sviluppo economico e artistico.
1633 Viene avviata l’attuale basilica di San Biagio, conclusa nel 1650, su progetto dell’architetto finalese Andrea Storace: croce latina, tre navate, cupola centrale, e la pianta ruotata di novanta gradi rispetto alla chiesa gotica che sostituisce.
1648 La Repubblica di Genova saccheggia le terre del marchesato. Santa Caterina viene risparmiata, quasi fosse una zona franca e inviolabile, ed è in parte per questo che tanto di essa è arrivato fino a noi.
1713 Con l’estinzione degli Asburgo-Spagna il marchesato è ceduto ai genovesi, e Finalborgo perde di importanza. Genova lo tiene in feudo, con alterne fortune, fino al 1797, quando viene cancellata la legislazione feudale e istituita la Repubblica Ligure.
1802 I domenicani sono soppressi dalle leggi napoleoniche, dopo quattro secoli a Santa Caterina. Nel 1805 la chiesa conventuale è confiscata e usata per alloggiare le truppe, e il monumento funebre dell’ultimo marchese carrettesco viene trasportato in San Biagio, dove sta sopra il portale mediano.
1804 Viene inaugurato il Teatro Aycardi, ricavato dal preesistente oratorio dei Padri delle Scuole Pie su progetto di Nicolò Barella: 250 posti in ventiquattro palchi e una piccola platea. È il teatro ottocentesco più antico del ponente ligure.
1864 Il Genio militare del Regno d’Italia converte Santa Caterina in carcere, edificando celle di rigore dentro il campanile e togliendo alla chiesa quanto la spoliazione napoleonica aveva lasciato. Le celle sopravvivono, di circa 170 per 90 centimetri ciascuna, e sono visitabili.
1877 Il soppresso comune di Perti viene aggregato al comune di Finalborgo: l’ultimo ampliamento del borgo come amministrazione indipendente.
1898 Anarchici e socialisti arrestati durante i Moti di Milano, sotto Bava Beccaris, vi sono reclusi in numero tale che per loro si ricavano dormitori giù, nell’ex chiesa conventuale. In altra epoca li seguiranno antifascisti e prigionieri della seconda guerra mondiale.
1927 Finalborgo, Finalmarina e Finalpia vengono fusi a costituire il comune di Finale Ligure. Il borgo era stato comune autonomo fino a quel giorno e dal 1863 aveva il municipio in Palazzo Ricci.
1931 Apre il museo archeologico del Finale nel convento restaurato. Oggi documenta oltre 350.000 anni di presenza umana in questo territorio, ed è il motivo per cui la maggior parte dei visitatori varca la porta.
1949 Nell’aprile papa Pio XII eleva San Biagio alla dignità di basilica minore. Nello stesso anno il crocifisso ligneo del 1693 viene spostato da dietro l’altare maggiore al terzo altare della navata destra, senza le sue decorazioni.
1965 L’uso carcerario di Santa Caterina cessa definitivamente, dopo centouno anni. I lavori di conservazione fra il 1995 e il 2004 hanno poi recuperato la chiesa, il campanile, i due chiostri, i camminamenti, le mura e il giardino botanico.

Che cosa ha conservato l’essere stati lasciati da parte

Le murature di Finalborgo sopravvivono perché il paese ha smesso di contare. Una volta passato il marchesato a Genova nel 1713 non c’erano soldi né motivo per ricostruire, e le mura, le porte, le due piazze e la maglia viaria dentro sono semplicemente rimaste. Le perdite sono venute invece dalle confische: Napoleone prese Santa Caterina e il governo italiano la riprese nel 1864, e buona parte di quello che oggi sta in basilica — il monumento funebre dei Del Carretto, la Madonna delle Rose, l’ancona di Pascale Oddone — è proprietà conventuale spostata più che perduta. Il convento stesso fu privato di ogni riferimento religioso e rifatto come prigione, che è la cosa più strana capitata a un edificio di qui ed è oggi, restaurata, il motivo per entrarci. L’unica demolizione voluta è stata quella della basilica gotica, abbattuta a metà Seicento per una chiesa ad angolo retto con essa: e perfino lì il campanile e parte dell’abside sono stati tenuti, incastrati contro le mura del paese dove stanno ancora.

Verificato su Wikipedia, ottobre 2026.

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Verificato su Wikipedia — Between 1142 and 1148 the marquis Enrico I Del Carretto, called il Guercio, inherited from his father Bonifacio del Vasto the territory of the march of Savona, of which he obtained the investiture from Frederick Barbarossa on 10 June 1162. While the comuni of Savona and Noli were making themselves independent, Enrico's domains were divided between his two sons. Towards the end of the twelfth century Enrico II Del Carretto began to use the title of marquis of Finale and girded the urban nucleus with walls, giving origin to the "burgus Finarii", today's Finalborgo. The Del Carretto family would govern the Marquisate of Finale until 1602. The town then passed under Habsburg domination until 1713. In this period the marquisate of Finale is an indispensable staging post for transferring Spanish troops into the Milanese domains without having to ask the permission of Genoa, and for carrying goods without paying tolls; Finale therefore has a great economic and artistic development. With the extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs the marquisate of Finale was ceded to the Genoese, and Finalborgo lost importance. The Republic of Genoa held the marquisate of Finale in fief with varying fortunes until 1797, when feudal legislation was cancelled and the Ligurian Republic instituted. Finale was then incorporated first into the Ligurian Republic and then into the Napoleonic French Empire, under which the rioni of Borgo, Pia and Marina were temporarily reunited in a single administration and inserted into the newly constituted Dipartimento di Montenotte. After the Restoration the Ligurian republic passed to the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814 and then, after the unification of Italy, to the Kingdom of Italy from 1861. In 1877 the suppressed comune of Perti was aggregated to the comune of Finalborgo. Finalborgo remained an autonomous comune until 1927., The settlement was developed in the Finale hinterland, not directly on the sea, in order to be more protected against possible Saracen landings on the coast, in a place easily defensible: the confluence of the Aquila torrent with the Pora torrent, whose beds constitute a single natural moat, subsequently reinforced by the town's wall circuit, which defended the built-up area on the east, south and west sides, while the northern side of the town was naturally protected by the spur of the Becchignolo hill, which over the centuries was fortified with the construction of Castel Gavone on its summit and by a linking tower halfway up the slope, subsequently absorbed into the fortress of Castel San Giovanni., The basilica collegiata di San Biagio is a Catholic place of worship situated in the historic urban nucleus of Finalborgo, in piazza San Biagio, at Finale Ligure in the province of Savona; it is the seat of the parish community of the same name of the vicariate of Finale Ligure-Noli of the diocese of Savona-Noli. In April 1949 Pope Pius XII elevated it to the dignity of minor basilica. The cult of san Biagio, protector among others of wool carders, is probably one of the most ancient of the Finale; the production and trade of wool bales is a traditional activity of the Finalese, documented for the first time in 1128 by the customs regulation of Genoa, in which the inhabitants of Finale appear as exporters of wool and hemp. The church, however, appears for the first time in a written document only in 1261; a shelter for the sick was annexed to it but no ruin of it remains. The ancient church, whose origin is unknown, was placed on the other side of the Aquila torrent, but was rebuilt within the perimeter of the walls of Finalborgo in 1372-1375, in Gothic style. Damaged in the late sixteenth century following the second invasion of the marquisate of Finale by the Republic of Genoa, and by then inadequate in size, the Gothic church was almost entirely demolished in the middle of the seventeenth century to make space for a new building then under construction, but with its plan rotated by 90 degrees. The apse and the apsidal chapels of the fourteenth-century church have been partially conserved in the short space between the seventeenth-century building and the walls of the Borgo. The new church, built between 1633 and 1650 to a design by the Finale architect Andrea Storace, has a Latin-cross plan divided into three naves with a central dome, and it conserves the original and characteristic octagonal bell tower with slender bifore., The new church of San Biagio was enriched with paintings and statues and decorated from the Baroque-Rococo period onward. A good part of its present furnishings, however, comes from the conventual complex of Santa Caterina, the "superga" of the Del Carretto, which was confiscated first by Napoleon Bonaparte during the Ligurian Republic and then by the Italian government in 1864 for civil uses. The walls were subsequently frescoed and stuccoed thanks to the work, in 1878, of the painters Francesco Semino and Domenico Buscaglia -- frescoes of the dome and of the presbytery vault -- resumed in 1911 by Luigi Gainotti and Antonio Bertolotto in the vault. Above the middle portal can be admired the funerary monument of Sforza Andrea Del Carretto, last marquis of the Carretto family, a work commissioned by his heir Giovan Andrea Doria and transported into San Biagio only in 1805, when the church of Santa Caterina was confiscated by Napoleon Bonaparte and used to billet troops; the statue is the work of Battista Orsolino, of the sculptural school of Taddeo Carlone. To the left of the portal is the baptismal font; the basin and the balustrades were made by Girolamo Bocciardo in 1798, while the statues of Gesu Cristo and San Giovanni Battista are a neoclassical work of 1811, the first and only work in marble by a sculptor in wood, the Genoese Angelo Olivari. To Girolamo's father, Pasquale Bocciardo, is attributed the curious and fanciful marble pulpit of 1764-1765, in which he carved the Vision of Ezekiel with the divine chariot and the tetramorphs. In the presbytery, the marble balustrade with angels is the work of Pasquale Bocciardo, in which four figures of angels support the cloth decorated with fine burin work; Pasquale Bocciardo is also the author of the high altar of 1799, during whose making he was helped by his uncle Andrea Casareggio, with whom he shared the workshop in via Giulia in Genoa. The famous peculiarity of this altar is the drape of the table, which seems to be of embroidered cloth but is in reality pure marble., The former convent of Santa Caterina is a religious building in the piazza of the same name in the historic centre of Finalborgo at Finale Ligure, in the province of Savona. Since 1931 the ancient convent has housed the archaeological museum of the Finale, a congress hall and a venue for shows and exhibitions at the adjoining oratory of the Disciplinanti. The foundation of the conventual building can be dated to 1359, by the work of the Del Carretto family, feudatories of the Marquisate of Finale, who used the complex as a prestigious and monumental burial area. Inhabited from 1381 by Dominican friars, as though it were a "free and inviolable" zone, the convent was spared from the sack carried out in the lands of the marquisate in 1648 by the Republic of Genoa. The religious order occupied the complex until 1802, that is until the suppression of the ecclesiastical orders willed by the Napoleonic laws of the Ligurian Republic and of the French Empire., The clock of the bell tower of Santa Caterina, with a painted dial, is dated 1561, with the original peculiarity of having had an anticlockwise rotation to compensate for the shadow of the sundials, which in this geographical position moves from west towards east, the opposite of the course of the sun. The internal structure of the bell tower was transformed in 1864 by the Genoese directorate of the Genio militare of the Kingdom of Italy with the building of punishment cells of a nineteenth-century prison, perfectly conserved and visitable; the church too was then restructured, further removing every religious reference after the earlier Napoleonic spoliation, including the conventual spaces more adapted to a hard penitentiary. Each cell of the bell tower measures about 170 by 90 cm, without any external opening except the single spyhole above each door. The walls and the doors of the cells bear graffiti and writings with names, dates and lines drawn to indicate the time passed in conditions of absolute absence of human rights and personal dignity. Besides common criminals there were imprisoned here detainees held for political reasons, opponents of the politics of the Kingdom of Italy, including the socialist anarchists arrested during the Moti di Milano under Bava Beccaris in 1898 who, given their high number, were placed in dormitories made below in the former church, replaced afterwards, in another epoch, by antifascists and prisoners arrested during the Second World War. Prison use ceased definitively in 1965. Further interventions, from 1995 to 2004, have valorised and conserved the church with its bell tower, the two internal cloisters, the walkways, the walls and the botanical garden; inside, besides a refreshment point with ethical aims, there are the museum and the communal library., The church of the Santa Caterina complex dates from the first half of the fifteenth century and was originally constituted of three naves separated by columns in Pietra del Finale, of which two of square form and one semicircular, facing north. In subsequent centuries, following the various ecclesiastical norms, its structure was varied, such as the movement of the apse to the opposite side; further remodellings were carried out in the first half of the nineteenth century and again when the complex, in disuse, was transformed into a prison. The interior conserves some cycles of frescoes of the early fifteenth century representing principally Episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary. On the south flank are two portals in Gothic style, both walled up, called "delle Donne" and "degli Uomini", with the representations of the noble arms of the Del Carretto and of the Agnus Dei. Dating from the Renaissance are the two communicating cloisters at the side of the body of the church, built between 1500 and 1530 at the wish of the cardinal Carlo Domenico Del Carretto. The bell tower, built on an apsidal chapel, suffered the demolition of its cuspide following the earthquake of 1887 which affected the Ligurian Ponente., Among the religious architecture of Finalborgo: the basilica collegiata di San Biagio -- the present parish building, the third, built in the seventeenth century to a design by the Finale architect Andrea Storace, containing important sculptures by Pasquale Bocciardo and his brother Domenico, and interesting pictorial works among them the Martirio di Santa Caterina by Oddone Pascale and the Madonna delle rose by Vincenzo Tamagni, and in which is kept the mausoleum of the last descendant of the Carretto family, Giovanni Andrea Sforza Del Carretto; the conventual complex of Santa Caterina, founded in 1359 and subsequently completed with the addition of two fine Renaissance cloisters, today the seat of the civic museum, in whose adjacent conventual church, now transformed into an auditorium, are fifteenth-century frescoes; and the chiesa di San Giuseppe Calasanzio, outside the walls of the borgo. Among the civil architecture: the Palazzo del Tribunale, formerly the seat of the Del Carretto government and later the judicial and administrative centre of the Marquisate of Finale, existing at least from the early years of the fourteenth century, restructured by the marquis Giovanni I Del Carretto in 1462 who entrusted the recovery project to Giorgio Molinari, the latter modifying both interiors and exteriors with the construction of a new staircase and the opening of intermediated bifore, the palace being revisited again internally in 1781 with the interest of governor Giovanni Benedetto Centurione of the Republic of Genoa, its facade of great interest for the presence both of typical fifteenth-century pictorial decorations and of traces of all the subsequent interventions; Palazzo Ricci, a Renaissance building in front of the former church of the Santa Caterina complex, which is said to have been the palace of the powerful cardinal Carlo Domenico Del Carretto, acquired and restructured in 1528 by the noble Ricci family and subsequently, from about 1863 to 1927, the seat of the comune of Finalborgo; Palazzo Cavasola, an ancient Carretto palace, the "casa della Camera", which at the end of the sixteenth century was donated to Erasmo Cavasola by the marquis Alessandro Del Carretto, notably restructured in the eighteenth century, with a facade with rococo decorations and a majestic slate portal; and Palazzo Brunenghi, a medieval building in whose portico the pillory was placed., The Teatro Aycardi was inaugurated in 1804 and is the oldest nineteenth-century theatre of the Ligurian Ponente. It was obtained from the pre-existing oratory of the Padri delle Scuole Pie to a design by Nicolo Barella, and had a capacity of 250 persons distributed in twenty-four boxes and a small stalls. For performance at the Aycardi the opera "L'Empirico ed il Masnadiero" was specially written in 1845 by Ligurian artists of the local Accademia Filarmonica. In 2024 the structure reopened to the public, after recent conservation works on the roofs and the facade. In via Brunenghi in the locality of Altino, where the old boundary between the Borgo and the Marina of Finale passed and where the change of horses was, there is a small seventeenth-century military building., Finalborgo is the seat of the "Societa Filarmonica di Finalborgo", conventionally founded in 1826. The Biblioteca mediateca Finalese is housed at the conventual complex of Santa Caterina at Finalborgo, with over 170 thousand volumes. The Museo archeologico del Finale, opened in 1931 in the restored conventual complex of Santa Caterina at Finalborgo, conserves important prehistoric archaeological finds documenting over 350,000 years of human presence in this territory of the Finale., In the first altar of the right nave of San Biagio is the triptych of the Mystic Marriage of saint Catherine of Alexandria, among her witnesses san Gottardo and san Sebastiano, ascribable to the school of Bernardino Fasolo and made for the Confraternita dei Disciplinanti of the convent of Santa Caterina, transported into San Biagio on the occasion of the unification of the conventual confraternity with that of San Biagio, which took place in 1626; a rich frame decorated at the base was then added, and san Gottardo was modified into san Biagio by the addition of a carder's comb in his hand. In the second altar is the monumental altarpiece representing the Martyrdom of saint Catherine with san Domenico, san Pietro, san Paolo, the Annunciation and the Pieta, by the Piedmontese painter Pascale Oddone (1533), a work coming from the high altar of Santa Caterina; the episcopal arms at the top and the Carretto arms indicate the donor, whom G. Castelnovi identified as Luigi Del Carretto, count and bishop of Cahors, who however died in 1524, so that it would be his nephew Paolo Del Carretto, who held the same offices from 1525. At the third altar is a wooden crucifix by Francesco Agnesi called il Corsetto (1693), previously placed behind the high altar and moved here without its decorations in 1949. At the fourth altar, seat of the old eighteenth-century organ, is a canvas dedicated to san Giovanni Nepomuceno, patron of Bohemia, between the saints Francesco da Paola and Lucia among angels, the work of Giuseppe Paganelli da Bergamo of 1798; this saint, protector against floods, is also represented on the internal surface of Porta Testa, from which the waters of a sudden flooding would potentially burst in. At the fifth and last right altar is the canvas of the Madonna delle Grazie among the souls in purgatory, the work of Pier Lorenzo Spoleti of 1723, positioned on a support perhaps made by Pietro Ripa between 1718 and 1728, with columns faced in marble, comprising material reused from the nearby site of Castel Gavone. On the walls of the presbytery are copies of Raphael's Transfiguration and of the Assumption of the Virgin by the Fleming Peter Paul Rubens, made by the Finale painter Pier Lorenzo Spoleti in 1722; under the latter picture is conserved a marble ciborium of 1521 by the sculptor Giovanni Lorenzo Sormano. The wooden walnut choir was completed in 1721 by the master Gio Benedetto Mora. Of particular interest is the pipe organ, built by Gioacchino Concone in 1784 and reformed by the Savonese Giovanni Battista Dessiglioli in 1894. In the left nave, the panel of the Madonna delle Rose, already from the convent of Santa Caterina, in which the saint, a king's daughter, presents the marquis of Finale Alfonso I del Carretto while san Domenico presents his brother, the cardinal Carlo Domenico; the work, later than the disappearance of the two figures (1517), has been attributed to Vincenzo Tamagni, a painter originally from San Gimignano who, after moving to Rome in the middle of the sixteenth century, worked on the papal commissions of the Vatican Loggias beside Raphael. (ottobre 2026).