“The splendid site with the barbaric name” is the way the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio defined the “Portofino Kulm“, the hotel in the “liberty” style that was built bySebastiano Gaggini at the beginning of this century.

Gaggini, besides being fond of his native Camogli, was also in love with Portofino Mountain and with the riviera of the Portofino Bay. In constructing this jewel called the hotel of the “vetta” (peak) because it sits in fact high atop the mountain.

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It isn’t easy to get one’s bearings in this complex period of history that goes from the period of the “signorie” in Italy to the formation of Spanish domination on the peninsula. Carlo V. whose ancestors left him half of Europe as an inheritance, was for that reason i puzzle. When he played the game of forging alliances, he was easily tempted to “throw in the towel”.

Speaking in particular of Andrea Doria who in his last years was allied with Charles V. it is terrifying when one notes how this great man changed sides so often.

Andrea Doria was in admiral of Francesco I, the king of France, when the Adornos dominated Genoa with the support of the Spanish.

Andrea Doria was allied with the French and had established his general headquarters at Cervara where the Fieschis were quartering their troops in the courtyard of the monastery.

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Francesco I, the king who in 1515 succeeded Louis XII came to Italy in September of the same year to redeem the duke of Milan taken from France two years before as a result of the victory of the Holy League sponsored by Pope Giulio II.

After the defeat of Massimiliano Sforza at Melegnano, the young king of nineteen years ruddy and ambitious, became one of the richest and most important regions of Italy.

This, he believed, was the moment to make his bid for the imperial crown.

Another young potentate had appeared on the European scene however. He was Carlo V, who had inherited Flanders and the Franca Contea from his father Philip of Habsburg and the kingdom of Spain from his mother, Giovanna la Pazza, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella.

Francesco I and Carlo V are two names that remain in the heads of all student for the important roles they played in history. Carlo was named emperor in 1519 at nineteen years of age and in May of 1525 defeated Francesco I after a resurgent conflict for domination.

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Don Giovanni of Austria, natural son of Carlo V. was the great admiral who defeatated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto. Besides the Venetians, the Genoese, and the Pontiffs, he had as his ally the winds.

First, the northwest wind that pushed his galleys against the enemy, then the southeast wind which prevented the Moslems from attacking.

His stepbrother, Philip II, was not so lucky with the winds three years later in 1574 when, on behalf of the very christian king Carlo V, he was sent from Naples to Genoa to try to calm the smoldering conflicts between the old and new nobility for governance of the city.

In fact he was blocked by an opposing wind at Portofino and was a guest at Cervara with an honorable welcome.

It seems that he aspired to become master of the turbulent Genoa and probably held meetings with representatives of the old nobility who had occupied Portovenere, Sestri Levante, Chiavari, and Rapallo, lands east of the Republic.

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Maria de’ Medici, daughter of the defunct grand duke of Tuscany Francesco I De Medici, was 27 years old when for reasons of sta- te her uncle Ferdinando conceded her in matrimony to the 47 years old Enrico IV of Borbone, king ara of Navarra (from 1572) and of France (from 1579).

Pope Clement VIII had annulled the first marriage of the king with Margherita di Valois (who could not have children) because she confessed to having contracted the marriage under duress.

Married to the king of France through the power of attorney of M. eur de Bellegarde, ambassador of to Florence, by cardinal Pietro Aldobrandino, nephew of the Pope, Maria set sail on October 13, from Livorno in a superb galley escorted by six others belonging to the grand duke, five from the Pontiff, and two others from the Knights of Malta.

The ships found weak and unfavorable winds and had to first direct themselves towards the island of Gorgona and then towards the eastern Ligurian coast.

They arrived at Portofino 8 days after their departure the 22nd of October but an unusually strong northwest wind coming off the mountain prevented them from continuing the voyage on to the port of Genoa. It was thus necessary to stop atPortofino.

Up to this point history. Now I will leave some space for fantasy, supported however by immaginative tradition.

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The great Jesuit preacher, originally from Nettuno, was considered in all of Italy a charismatic personality of great distinction. In fact, his sermons without rhetoric had an incredible success in those times in which Italy, half asleep, lacked stimulus and was, submitting to a period of decadence.

The spiritual mission was to give a goal to human life and the throngs of the faithful venerated Segneri to such a fanatical point that they would do anything to obtain some physical memento, cutting pieces of his clothing, slicing splinters from the furniture he sat on, or from where his coat was hanging.

Padre Paolo Segneri was sought by the Genoese senate and invited to Genoa “La Superba” (The Proud) in 1688.

On his way from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany he stopped at Lerici, then he departed from there Saturday April 24th for Genoa. However a strong westerly wind blew in from the high point of the promontory making it impossible to continue.

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The French political writer, who travelled extensively in Europe to observe its institutions and customs, was also in Genoa which he did not in fact judge favorably.

Certainly “La Superba”, which was persistent in its effort to remain dominant over little rebellious Corsica, was the same which had lost out on the discovery and conquest of America, and that in the century of enlightenment did not yet have a decent road to go to Tuscany.

To reach that grand duchy it was necessary to travel by sea. By land, with mules, it was exceedingly dangerous not just because of the risk of falling from one of the steep rocky paths that curved around the Apennine mountains, but because of the risk of being attacked by the brigands frequently found in those mountains.

Charles Louis suffered on the sea and preferred the mules. So on November 21,11 1728, when he reached Portofino, this little village seemed blessed by God for the rejuvenating pause and walk on the mountain that it offered.

Surely, during the three days he stayed in Portofino he took the opportunity to gather information about the political situation of the town, a dependent of Genoa. Thus from the “smaller” he could better understand the “larger”.

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When we observe along the so-called “beach of the women” at the Pedale in Santa Margherita Ligure, all the skin divers (male and female) that submerge and emerge like so many frogs, it is exceedingly humorous for us here at the end of the twentieth century to think that in 1785 the forty-five years old scientist Lazzaro Spallanzaniswam in these very same waters to study the necessity of contact between the eggs of amphibians and the liquid sperm for reproduction.

He had come to the abbey of Cervara from Portovenere where he had conducted important studies in taxidermy.

This personality, a great traveller and attentive observer of nature in all its multiple aspects, though not written about extensively and known primarily to a handful of specialists, was nevertheless a Spallanzani great experimental scientist, a forerunner of the great Louis Pasteur who did important studies on spontaneous generation which he demonstrated to be impossible.

He was thus a not very recognized pride of the century of the enlightened. Among his discoveries was the exam for the system of the circulation of blood. He was a professor of natural sciences, obtaining this post through the empress Maria Teresa of Austria.

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