Liguria

“ The railway from Pisa skirts the entire coast of the territory, throwing off lines to Parma from Sarzana and Spezia, to Milan and Turin from Genoa, and to Turin from Savona, and there is a line from Ventimiglia to Cuneo and Turin by the Col di Tenda. Liguria embraces the two provinces of Genoa and Porto Maurizio (Imperia) , which once formed the republic of Genoa. ”

“ The ethnic transition from the Alpine race in the Po Valley to the Mediterranean race in Italy proper is particularly sharp along the crest of the Apennines from the French frontier to Florence. The population of modern Liguria, the long, narrow strip of country between the mountains and the Gulf of Genoa, is distinctly allied to the south in all respects. Especially does the Mediterranean long-headedness of this region appear upon both of our maps of cephalic index. ”

“ Villas and castles rise on every promontory and in every valley of these favoured districts. For a dozen miles on either side of Genoa the coast is lined by villas. The population of the city has overflowed the walls which once confined it, and is establishing itself in populous suburbs. The long street which winds between factories and gardens, scales promontories, and descends into valleys, will continue to grow in length until it extends along the whole coast of Liguria, for the charms of the country attract men of leisure from every quarter of Europe. ”

“ The usual course was taken by the royal galley. Genoa was the rendezvous, as of old. The Genoese gave their visitor a splendid reception. His romantic career had greatly affected them, and now that they beheld his gracious person their delight knew no bounds. Never had a royal visitor such an ovation in Liguria. ”

“ The inhabitants have always been adventurous seamen—Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci were Genoese,—and the coast has several good harbours, Genoa, Spezia and Savona being the best. In educational and general development, Liguria stands high among the regions of Italy. The populations of the respective provinces and their chief towns are, according to the census of 1901 (popolazione residente or legale) —province of Genoa, pop. ”

“ The names of the villages—Quarto, Quinto, &c.—on the south-east side and Pontedecimo on the north of Genoa allude to their distance along the Roman roads. The Roman Liguria, forming the ninth region of Augustus, was thus far more extensive than the modern, including the country on the north slopes of the Apennines and Maritime Alps between the Trebia and the Po, and extending a little beyond Albintimilium. On the west Augustus formed the provinces of the Alpes Maritimae and the Alpes Cottiae. Towns of importance were few, owing to the nature of the country. ”

“ SARZANA, a town and episcopal see of Liguria, Italy, in the province of Genoa, 9 m. E. of Spezia, on the railway to Pisa, at the point where the railway to Parma diverges to the north, 59 ft. above sea-level. ”

“ HE limits of the Italian peninsula have been most distinctly traced by nature. The Alps, which bound it in the north, from the promontories of Liguria to the mountainous peninsula of Istria, present themselves like a huge wall, the only breaches in which are formed by passes situated high up in the zones of pines, pastures, or eternal snows. Italy, like its two sister peninsulas of Southern Europe, thus constitutes a world of its own, destined by nature to become the theatre of a special evolution of humanity. ”

“ Of their place in the family of nations we are ignorant: we only know that they were neither Iberians nor Celts." G. B. Niebuhr, History of Rome, volume 1. "On the coast of Liguria, the land on each side of the city of Genoa, a land which was not reckoned Italian in early times, we find people who seem not to have been Aryan. And these Ligurians seem to have been part of a race which was spread through Italy and Sicily before the Aryan settlements, and to have been akin to the non-Aryan inhabitants of Spain and southern Gaul, of whom the Basques ... remain as a remnant." ”

“ Liguria was the only consular province and was assigned to both consuls. The result of the ballot gave the civic jurisdiction to M. Ogulnius Gallus, the alien jurisdiction to M. Valerius, Hither Spain to Q. Fulvius Flaccus, Further Spain to P. Manlius, Sicily to L. Caecilius Denter, and Sardinia to C. Terentius Istra. The consuls received instructions to levy troops. Q. Fabius had written from Liguria to say that the Apuani were contemplating a renewal of hostilities and there was danger of their making an irruption into the territory of Pisae. ”

“ The districts of Italy which show between 1881 and 1903 the greatest increase of new institutions, or of gifts to old ones, are Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria, while Sardinia, Calabria and Basilicata stand lowest, Latium standing comparatively low.
The patrimony of Italian charitable institutions is considerable and is constantly increasing. ”

“ In Genoa itself the families inscribed on the Golden Book, and alone having the right to sit in council and direct the affairs of state, and mismanage and oppress the Ligurian coast and Corsica, did not exceed one hundred and seventy. But in Liguria there were at least four hundred and fifty noble families decorated with titles, possessing vast estates, commanderies, and hereditary wealth, who were excluded from all share in the government.
All have gone under, not in the wars for the Milanese, but in the Revolution ”

“ From Cremona the road ran eastward to Bedriacum, where it forked, one branch running to the left to Verona and thence to the Brenner, the other to the right to Mantua, Altinum and Aquileia. The military occupation of Liguria depended upon this road, and several of the more important towns owed their origin largely to it. ”

“ Dertona was the only colony, and Alba Pompeia, Augusta Bagiennorum, Pollentia, Hasta, Aquae Statiellae, and Genua may also be mentioned; but the Ligurians dwelt entirely in villages, and were organized as tribes. ”

“ BOOK V. GENOESE SCHOOL. EPOCH I. The Ancients. Last among the ancient schools of Italy is to be enumerated the Genoese, in regard to the period in which it flourished, not to its merit, which I consider as being equal to that of many others. In Liguria the first revival of painting appeared tardy; not so its progress, which was rapid and distinguished. In Genoa and Savona, as well as in other cities situated on the sea-shore, there remain some ancient paintings by unknown hands, one of which, over the gate of Savona, is distinguished by the date of 1101. ”

“ In Venetia, Emilia, the Marches, Umbria and Tuscany the proportion of concentrated population is only from 40 to 55%; in Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy the proportion rises to from 70 to 76%; in southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia it attains a maximum of from 76 to 93%. ”

“ The want of great rivers in Liguria is compensated for to some extent by subterranean water-courses. Several springs rise from the bottom of the sea, at some distance from the shore. The springs of La Polla, in the Gulf of Spezia, are amongst the most bountiful amongst them. They have been isolated by the Italian Government from the surrounding salt water, and their water is supplied to ships.
Owing to the absence of rivers, the sterility of the soil, and the steep escarpments, this portion of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean coast region contrasts strikingly with other parts of temperate Europe. ”

“ Corsica, the cities of Ventimiglia and Sarzana, with its strong castles, the burgh of Levanto and the populous valley of Teico.
Our rich citizens lent their fortunes at high interest to the government of Spain; but the industries which had been the life of the people gradually declined.
In the first years of the century, Liguria was in its most flourishing condition. The smallest hamlets had profitable industries and trade. On the Western Riviera, Taggia was famous for its Muscatelle wines which Alberti says were not inferior to those of Candia and Cyprus. The trade in them was very active. ”

“ The roots of the Alps are curved, and in the form of a gulf, the head turned towards Italy; the middle of the gulf in the country of the Salassi, and its extremities turned, the one towards Ocra and the head of the Adriatic, the other towards the coast of Liguria as far as Genoa, a mercantile city of the Ligurians, where the Apennines fall in with the Alps. Immediately under [the Alps] there is a considerable plain, of about an equal extent of 2100 stadia both in breadth and length ”

“ LIGURES BAEBIANI, in ancient geography, a settlement of Ligurians in Samnium, Italy. The towns of Taurasia and Cisauna in Samnium had been captured in 298 B.C. by the consul L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, and the territory of the former remained Roman state domain. In 180 B.C. 47,000 Ligurians from the neighbourhood of Luna (Ligures Apuani) , with women and children, were transferred to this district, and two settlements were formed taking their names from the consuls of 181 B.C., the Ligures Baebiani and the Ligures Corneliani. ”

“ All the Venetian territory to the west of the Adige, together with Mantua, Modena, Lombardy, Massa-e-Carrara, Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, was incorporated into the new Cisalpine Republic; and Genoa, receiving from the Emperor the remnants of his feudal rights in the surrounding country, was transformed into the Ligurian Republic, with a constitution similar to that of the Cisalpine. ”

“ Whereas in Liguria there was every circumstance that could invigorate the courage of soldiers; the country mountainous and rugged, so that even the taking possession of unoccupied posts, and much more the dislodging of an enemy from those already in possession, was attended with much labour; the roads hilly, narrow, and exposed to ambuscades; the enemy light, active, and energetic in their motions, so as to allow no season or place to be quiet or secure; the necessary attack on the strong forts with much toil and danger ”

“ The lustrum was closed by the censors. Two hundred and fifty-seven thousand two hundred and thirty-one citizens were rated. It includes besides, the successes gained over the Corsicans and Ligurians.
1 When Lucius Postumius Albinus and Marcus Popilius Lænas brought before the senate first of all the distribution of the provinces, Liguria was assigned the joint province of both, with directions that they should enlist new legions, by which they would hold that province (two were decreed to each) ; and also ten thousand foot and six hundred horse of the Latin confederates ”

“ It was at first confined to the southern portion of Calabria, and was gradually extended northward, till about the time of the Punic wars it indicated the whole peninsula south of the Rivers Rubicon and Macra, the former separating Cisalpine Gaul and Umbria, the latter Liguria and Etruria. Italy, properly so called, is a very mountainous country, being filled up more or less by the broad mass of the Apennines, the offshoots or lateral branches of which, in some parts, descend quite to the sea, but in others leave a considerable space of level or low country. ”

“ In the lesser streets would be the stables for the pack-horses and the mules, the cellars for goods in transit, the hovels for the slaves, the moneylenders’ dens, the compounds for the soldiers and the huts of the wretched wild-eyed Ligurians who, under the lash of their masters, did the mean work of the town. ”

“ The Ligurians, being mountaineers, are a hardy and rustic tribe. The land itself taught them to be so by producing nothing which was not extracted from it by skilful cultivation, and by great labor. The Campanians were always proud from the excellence of their soil, and the magnitude of their crops, and the healthiness, and position, and beauty of their city. From that abundance, and from this affluence in all things, in the first place, originated those qualities—arrogance, which demanded of our ancestors that one of the consuls should be chosen from Capua ”

“ VI. Aemilius, when elected consul, marched against the sub-Alpine Ligurians, called by some Ligustines, a brave and spirited nation, and from their nearness to Rome, skilled in the arts of war. Mixed with the Gauls, and the Iberians of the sea coast, they inhabit the extremity of Italy where it dies away into the Alps, and also that part of the Alps which is washed by the Tuscan Sea, opposite the Libyan coast. ”

“ The visitor from the north of Europe is perplexed how to determine approximately the dates of the domestic buildings in every one of these Ligurian towns and villages. The architecture has a modern look, and yet the houses are decrepit, ruinous, and shabby. ”

“ Strange dinner-parties they must have had in their wild nooks and caverns in the mountains of Provence!
Gradually from these mysterious days we emerge upon centuries less absolutely hidden from our curiosity: the 363 time of the invasion of the Ligurians, Iberians, Celts, and other races, from about the fifteenth century b.c. to 600 b.c. This brings us almost back to the light of day, with the rather startling consciousness that the ancient Ligurians, who represented to the imagination the beginning of all things Provençal, suddenly appear as modern innovations. ”

“ The first peoples of whom we have actual knowledge are the Iberians and Ligurians. The Basques who now inhabit both sides of the Pyrenean range are probably the last representatives of the Iberians, who came from Spain to settle between the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay. The Ligurians, who exhibited the hard cunning characteristic of the Genoese Riviera, must have been descendants of that Indo-European vanguard who occupied all northern Italy and the centre and south-east Iberians and Ligurians. ”