Zuccarello

Zuccarello sits in the lower Neva valley, seven kilometers north of Albenga and the coast. The borgo was founded in 1248 by the inhabitants of the surrounding valley together with the Marquises of Clavesana, laid out as a single porticoed street that still runs the length of the town, with the bridge closing it off to the south and the church marking its far end to the north. The castle stands above both, on the hill, the seat from which the marquises held the place.

The Marquisate of Zuccarello passed to the Del Carretto branch and ruled the upper valley as an independent fief until the seventeenth century. It was into this family that the woman born in the town in 1379 belonged, and it was this family's alliance with Lucca that took her away from it: she married to seal the connection between the two houses and died at twenty-six giving birth to her second daughter. The valley that produced her is a minor tributary above a coastal town, and the marble sarcophagus that made her name lasting was carved and placed far from here. What remains in Zuccarello is the setting rather than the monument: the street, the bridge, the ruined seat of the family, and a house pointed to as the one where she was born.

From Genoa (GOA), about 1h 17m by car.

Turin (TRN) is about 2h 14m away.

By car from the centre of Milan 2h 40m.

Coming by train into Genova Piazza Principe? Zuccarello is about 1h 21m away by road.

Every town within reach of Genoa airport.