Five great authors who have written about Liguria
Flower Riviera, Genoa and surroundings, Gulf of Poets, Palm Riviera, Portofino and the Tigullio
Liguria has charmed the writing of five great authors who have written about Liguria in their books.
With words that talk about hearts filled with joy, clear skies, magical moments, paradise and ideal dreams: the words written by five of the world’s greatest literature writers describe five magnificent areas of Liguria.
Katy Mansfield, who fell in love with the Flower Riviera, David Herbert Lawrence who was bewitched by the blue skies of the Palms Riviera, Charles Dickens who dreamed of perfect happiness in Genoa, Nietzsche immersed in the paradise that is Portofino and the Tigullio and Mary Shelley enchanted by the Gulf of Poets: authors who have written about the wonderful Liguria.
Go and read their books to relive their emotions!
The stages
Katy MansfieldD.Herbert Lawrence
Charles Dickens
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Mary Shelley
Ospedaletti
Katy Mansfield: My heart is bursting with joy
Katherine Mansfield is a New Zealand author of delicate, bright prose, known for her Modernist stories (read the “Prelude”, or “The Garden Party”) where she is able to describe her characters with fleeting details and psychological nuances. A friend of Virginia Woolf and of D.H. Lawrence, she spent a short but important part of the latter years of her short life in Liguria, in Sanremo and Ospedaletti.
She arrived on Liguria’s Ponente Coast in the autumn of 1919 to spend the winter there. Like many foreign visitors of that era, the Riviera's warm, sunny climate helped to cure a serious illness, tubercolosis. Katherine was also fleeing from another illness: she often suffered from mood swings and fell into deep depressions, from which she emerged thanks to writing.
After a stay at the Hotel Excelsior in Sanremo she chose a small house, Casetta Deerholm, set amidst the vegetation on the western hill of Ospedaletti. Her time spent at Deerholm gave her some of the best moments of her short life, which she spent reading, listening to music (and playing, she was a talented cellist), but above all writing.
Her state of mind becomes clear in her letters to her husband John Middleton Murry.
“The weather is wonderful, like silk... This house feels like it belongs to the fairies.”
Letter to John Middleton Murry.
Mansfield found inspiration in the surrounding nature, describing the garden, olive trees and wild hills with enthusiasm.
“Every day I love this house more for some new grace, and every day I hold a minute review of the garden, and there is always something fresh and wonderful. I look at the […] wild fig and olive, the low-growing berries and the tufts of sweet roots. This is a place for lovers”.
— Letter to John Middleton Murry
However, she wasn't averse to visiting the Riviera: she used to take the tram to Sanremo, along the Taggia – Sanremo – Ventimiglia line, which is still an important route on Liguria’s Ponente Riviera today. She would visit several antique markets (known as “brocante” locally), shop in the local grocery stores and shops in Sanremo old town, the famous Pigna that Italo Calvino would write about a few years later in “The Path to the Spiders' Nests”.
“Then I walked along the Boulevard which smelled of pines, gum trees, heliotrope, geraniums and a dash of the sea, and really had a look at Ospedaletti [...] And the country above and beyond it-these immense romantic glimpses. sauntered along, gripping Mother’s walking-stick. My heart was bursting with happiness. The sun had his arm round my shoulder”
Letter to John Middleton Murry
But the beast pursuing her did not leave her in peace: while waiting in vain for her husband to move to Ospedaletti, she moved to Menton and then in October 1922, to Georges Gurdjieff’s "Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man” in Fontainebleau, where she died on 9 January 1923, at just 35 years old.
The quote is taken from a letter written to her husband, from “Letters to John Middleton Murry”
Monte Ursino castle in Noli
D.Herbert Lawrence: A clear sky as the most important thing
A troubled spirit, a tireless traveller, a free voice of twentieth-century literature: David Herbert Lawrence found one of his most intense refuges in Spotorno . The English writer stayed in the village near Savona from autumn 1925 to the spring of 1926, choosing Liguria as a place of light, silence and regeneration.
Lawrence was not searching for night life or cultural salons in Spotorno. He was wanting sunshine to warm his body, the sea to accompany his days, a simple life that could restore his energy for writing. He rented Villa Bernarda, a house with a garden overlooking the Mediterranean, just below the castle ruins. From here he could look down on the village, listen to the slow rhythm of the seasons and let the landscape enter his narrative voice, filter free.
In his letters, Spotorno becomes a place experienced with daily wonder, full of tiny details and constant light. He wrote to John Middleton Murry in November 1925:
"We’ve taken a house here till April - above the village and the sea […] The sun is shining, the eternal Mediterranean is young and blue, the last leaves are falling from the vines in the garden”.
Simple words, but full of presence. There is all of Lawrence's Liguria in this description: a beauty that is not spectacular, but is deep, not distracting but comforting. A landscape that becomes a space for concentration, a fragile balance of uncertain health and creative urgency.
His stay in Liguria was one of the most fruitful of his life. This house was where he wrote stories and thoughts that were included in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories. The story Sun, set in Liguria, is perhaps the most powerful summary of this experience: the Mediterranean light becomes a vital force, a tool for physical and spiritual rebirth, an intimate response to the modern unease contained in his entire work.
Spotorno is also a place for encounters that left deep traces. This is where Lawrence met Angelo Ravagli, a person who entered his private life and who many experts believe was the inspiration for Oliver Mellors, the main character in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Once again, Liguria becomes a place bordering on both life and literature, somewhere between real experience and narrative imagination.
The symbols of this bond remain as essential images: Villa Bernarda as a creative refuge, the castle that dominates the landscape as an ancient memory, the sun and citrus fruit trees as promises of rebirth and vitality. D. H. Lawrence’s time in Spotorno is a story of a Liguria that welcomes quietly and heals without a fuss, full of light, silences and daily routine. A straightforward, Mediterranean town included in his writing that stays in the minds of those travelling through it, even today, with the same uneasy, liberal eyes that the English writer used.
The quote is taken from "Letters to John Middleton Murry", Letter to John Middleton Murry, Villa Bernarda, 19 November 1925. *The Letters of D. H. Lawrence*, vol. V, 1924–1927, Cambridge University Press, 1989
Genova panorama from Torre Embriaci
Charles Dickens: A perfect dream of happiness
Genoa seen through foreign, curious and poetic eyes. These are the eyes of Charles Dickens, author, traveller and great narrator of the nineteenth century, one of the symbols of Genoa’s literary story. In the period 1844-1845, the English writer lived in the city for almost a year, leaving behind a valuable testimony of his conflicting, intense, theatrical attraction.
Born in Portsmouth in 1812, Charles Dickens is one of the most famous novel writers of world literature. The author of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Great Expectations, he discovered a constant source of observation and dream in travelling, that could nourish his writing and his view of the world.
Having arrived in Genoa with his family in search of quiet and inspiration, he first stayed at Villa Bagnarello, in Via San Nazaro, which he ironically nicknamed the “pink jail”, and then moved to Villa Pallavicino delle Peschiere, high above the city. From here he could observe Genoa from above, while writing Dombey and Son and being swept along by its urban extravagance.
Dickens’ Genoa is a picturesque, sensory city, made up of steep staircases, sudden descents, bells ringing amidst the buildings, and light and shadow chasing each other. A true urban labyrinth, arousing wonder and anxiety at the same time. His impressions were included in his Pictures from Italy (1846), one of the most vivid descriptions of Italy seen from the eyes of a foreigner.
Dickens described Genoa as a city that both moves and bewilders, a place where every step becomes an experience:
"It is a place that 'grows upon you' every day. There seems to be always something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle!) twenty times a day, if you like; and turn up again, under the most unexpected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn”.
He makes Genoa feel like a theatrical city, a place to be observed slowly and visited with curiosity. Following in Dicken’s steps means going on a literary journey to historical villas, panoramic views, bells and alleyways, being guided by dreams, wonder and narration. The perfect experience for international cultural tourism that is attentive, interested and educated.
Quote taken from "Pictures from Italy" (1846)
Rapallo, panorama from Zoagli
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: I have heaven at my feet
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, the famous German philosopher who characterised the 20th century with his idea of Übermensch and his desire for power, often stayed in Liguria. Born on 15 October 1844 in Rocken, near Leipzig, he studied classic philosophy and became a professor at the University of Basel until 1876 when he left due to health problems. He began to travel, convinced that the cure for his illnesses lay in the "South and latinity". He visited many Italian cities: Rome, Venice, Naples and Messina. However, he found the locations most in tune with his personality in Genoa and the Tigullio . He arrived in Genoa for the first time in October, 1876 and discovered a city where he could be at peace, in total isolation, comforted by a city where he could walk around the alleys and staircases or think on the cliffs looking over the winter sea: a metaphor for the creative chaos that gave rise to his philosophy. He came to Genoa often, also by chance, such as getting the wrong train. He believed it to be a spot on his formative path, an “experience”, which, in the German version of the word, contains the idea of a travelling. He visited the city as an adventurer, not as a tourist, like Christopher Columbus, a personality he greatly admired. The German philosopher's letters to his family reveal that he stayed in small hotels or in apartments he rented in Via Palestro or on Salita delle Battistine, a short distance from the centre and its majestic Palazzi dei Rolli. "My dears, here I am again staying in old Genoa, amidst the tangle of alleys..." (Letter dated 4th October 1881 to Franziska and Elisabeth Nietzsche). Struck by the beauty of the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno, he called it “The most beautiful of the most beautiful on earth...” (letter written at the end of February 1882 to Franziska and Elisabeth Nietzsche) and included a special section dedicated to the monumental figures in the cemetery in Idylls from Messina. Nietzsche also stayed in Rapallo. During the 1882–1883 winter, he stayed in a small hotel overlooking the sea (probably Hotel de la Poste). Despite his health difficulties, it was during this period that he was inspired to write the first part of “Also sprach Zarathustra” (“Thus spoke Zarathustra”). He often walked along the coastal path Rapallo – Zoagli - Portofino, finding creative inspiration in nature: this was where he had his ideas and inspiration for Zarathustra: “In the morning I used to start out in a southerly direction up the glorious road to Zoagli, which rises up through a forest of pines and gives one a view far out to sea. In the afternoon, or as often as my health allowed, I walked round the whole bay from Santa Margherita to beyond Portofino. […] It was on these two roads that all Zarathustra came to me, above all, Zarathustra himself as a type—I ought rather to say that it was on these walks that he waylaid me.”. The quote is inspired from Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche Briefe. Kritische Studienausgabe (KSB), a cura di G. Colli – M. Montinari, vol. 6 (1880–1884)
Villa Magni in San Terenzo di Lerici
Mary Shelley: Some kind of spell surrounded us
Have you ever heard of Frankenstein? The book’s author, Mary Shelley, is one of the main figures of the Percy Bysshe Shelley Literature Park in Lerici, in the Gulf of Poets, in Liguria. The British author stayed in both San Terenzo and Genoa from 1822 to 1823, in one of the most intense, dramatic periods of her life, leaving behind a lasting impression on these locations.
Liguria's nature, sea, wind and the nights filled with silence became a space where she could reflect and write, as she was almost suspended between the real and unreal. Mary Shelley writes about Liguria as a place of magic and imagination, where she could take her mind off everyday life and open it up to deep visions.
The Literature Park has been created to tell the story of this unique bond between landscape and literature. The sea, silence and nature become a part of the story at Villa Magni, in San Terenzo, where Mary lived with her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Here, Liguria's Gulf of Poets becomes a space of creation and imagination, where everyday reality stands still.
Mary Shelley describes these places as an almost unreal experience:
“It was too beautiful a place and it did not seem of this land. The remoteness of any trace of civilization, the sea at our feet, its incessant murmuring, everything invited my mind to meditate on strange thoughts and relieving it from everyday life led it to become familiar with the unreal. Some kind of spell surrounded us”.
After Percy Shelley’s death, Mary moved to Genoa, another essential location part of the Literature Park. She grieved in Liguria and transformed her experience into memories and writing, creating a deep, night-time vision of the landscape.
The Shelley Literature Park tells the story of a romantic, literary Liguria, which has inspired other British authors such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf over the years. A cultural itinerary that invites you to discover the area through the voice of a liberal, visionary, modern woman.
Visiting the Literature Park means entering into a place full of magic, creation and imagination, where literature becomes a live experience and the Gulf of Poets still speaks to those who visit it.
The quote is taken from Mary Shelley, "Rambles in Germany and Italy" (1844)
