In February 1898 Eleonora Duse was a guest in Santa Margherita Ligure. The great artist was looking to recuperate her health compromised by her strenuous theatrical tours.

Besides this, the vacation represented a special parenthesis to the turning point which her relationship with Gabriele D’Annunzio had taken.

They had recently made up after the brusque break-up which she had wanted because the artitic betrayal she felt by the Poet when he entrusted the interpretation of the play “La Città Morta” (The Dead City) to the French actress Sarah Bernhardt.

The play “Sogno di una Mattina di Primavera” (Dream of a Spring Morning) written for Duse was the first act of reconciliation by D’Annunzio.
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From the foundation of the first church of San Fruttuoso di Capodimonte to the apogee of the Abbey

When one speaks of San Fruttuoso with someone who knows this splendid locality on the promontory of Portofino, few are aware that the complete name of the nuclear abbey of this little village is San Fruttuoso di Capodimonte. Capodimonte explains the name; San Fruttuoso explains the legend which we will briefly relate.

Arriving from Spain, the priests Giustino and Procopio of Terragona wanted to reach the coast of Liguria and bring the bones of San Fruttuoso, the archbishop of Braga and founder of monasteries in Spain and Portugal. He would later be mart yered in 262.

A strong tempest surprised them in the area of Portofino and it was here that an angel of the Lord appeared to Giustino and promised to bring him to safety in a narrow’avine in the cliffs and from which he would chase away a pestiferous dragon. The priests would then have to construct a church there among the rocks by a gushing spring.
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Santa Margherita Ligure and Portofino until the formation of the Kingdom of Italy

From here on the history of Santa Margherita Ligure (see photo below) and Portofino revolves around the story of the families and their relationship with the parishes. There were always animosities and parochialism was never stronger than in this part of Liguria.

Between Portofino and Nozarego, Santa Margherita Ligure, San Giacomo and San Siro, and Rapallo there was tremendous competition with regard to the treasures that their respective churches possessed and the magnificence of the processions that were sponsored: in Santa Margherita the paintings of Bernardo Castello and the De Ferraris, in Nozarego the paintings of Cambiaso and the Crucifix of Maragliano, in San Giacomo the frescoes of Nicolò Barabino. etc.

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The house of Gea was not certainly the richest, nor the host elegant in the village, but it was undoubtedly the most fanciful and famous of the place.

It was not in the centre of the inhabited area, but it was placed in a little valley close to the mountain and it was celebrated everywhere for its prodigiuous characteristic: at every season it changed it’s colour, naturally, without anybody’s intervention with brushes and paints.

In Spring it adorned itself with pink and soft green shades, in Summer it took up the tonalities of golden yellow, in Autumn it was transformed for warm variation of brown ochre, while in Winter it lighted up with white touches.

Experts had come from all the world to carry out researches into the causes of those colourings, but they had tried to explain the mysterious phenomenon, linking it up vaguely with the influence of the sun.

When then they demanded an eplanation of it from Gea, a splendid girl of stately beauty, with very long hair reaching the ground, they could understand even less: Gea. who was a foundling and lived doing services to the ones who asked her for them, had arranged that little house by herself.

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The great Russian painter, one of the forerunners of abstractionism, was a guest inSanta Margherita Ligure and Portofino at Christmas of 1905.

We don’t intend to write a biography much less a description of his art, that is the job of the critics. Instead we want to let it he known that he was a grand lover of Italy where his parents had brought him when he was but three years old.

He then lived in the Ukraine with his aunt Elizabeth because his parents divorced.

There, he studied the piano and cello and learned German.

At twenty years old he enrolled in the University of Moscow and specialized in Political Economy. In 1889 the Society of Natural Sciences, Ethnography, and Anthropology sent him on a mission in Vologda where he became interested in the local decorative arts.

In the same year he attended the World’s Fair in Paris.

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(Portofino, Remo Cremona) – Weekend full of popularity for Portofino who has regained in these two days the covers of many Tabloid in the world, including ours, for the “official” of Premier Silvio Berlusconi to Portofino. Signs of his impending presence had already spread last Saturday with the arrival in Piazzetta’s daughter Marina, accompanied by her husband Maurizio Vanadia.

Marina, a very powerful woman in Italy, in Chanel white above the knee, has appeared in wonderful shape, with large earrings in white gold, the classic straw-colored bag as well as modaioli zatteroni style Positano-heeled 12.

Passionate, with husband and children, spent his day around boutiques, primarily attracted by the colorful display of Emilio Pucci, always hand in hand, tender and affectionate even nell’aperitivo the “Diving Bell” and Portofino sunset took all its magic.

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When one speaks of the Brown Castle it is normal to think immediately of Portofino, however few know that the castle in Paraggi also belonged to the Browns. Timothy Yeats Brown, originally of a Scotch family, following the romantic footsteps of the poets Byron and Shelly, came to Italy, to Portovenere where he lived on the island of Palmaria.

When he was named console of the United Kingdom to Genoa, he moved here with his family and raised his children who, while being British citizens felt Genoese in sentiment and loved Portofino. The oldest boy, Montagu, became console of S. M. Britannica when his father died. The second boy, Federico, was a great industrialist and businessman of the end of the nineteenth century.

The castle of Portofino, which was a Genoese fort and over the centuries belonged to the Florentines, the French, the Spanish, and, after Waterloo, was conquered by the English, has very ancient origins. Montagu Brown acquired it from the State in 1870 for seven thousand liras and had it adapted for civil habitation by the noted architect Alfredo D’Andrade; from this splendid position he dominated the two seas and could see below him the village of Portofino and all the bays and ravines that mark the coast towards Santa Margherita Ligure. On the terrace that in the past had been the esplanade of the fort, he planted two pine trees that today, having grown imposing and stately, characterize the castle.

He furnished the inside with furniture that came from clipper ships in that austere and aristocratic style so characteristic of the English of that epoch. On the walls of the studio of the castle hung paintings of Moeris and an authentic Hogarth copy. Montagu Brown invited many people in his castle.

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