Sanremo and Italo Calvino: A literary tour

This literary itinerary aims to explore Sanremo through some places that inspired the work of Italo Calvino. In the mid-nineteenth century, Sanremo experienced significant tourism development, becoming an important resort on the Ligurian Riviera. The town's popularity among the English and Russian aristocracy is well-documented. The vestiges of this period can still be seen today in the sumptuous villas, parks and architecture (e.g., the Russian Church, Villa Nobel, Villa Ormond). Indeed, Tsarina Maria Aleksandrovna was so enamoured of Sanremo that she had a street named after her, the Corso Imperatrice, where in 1941, a young Italo Calvino was photographed on a bench with Eugenio Scalfari and other classmates from the Liceo Cassini.

Mario Calvino, an agronomist and founder of the first Italian Experimental Station for Floriculture at Villa Meridiana, was a native of Sanremo, otherwise known as the "City of Flowers". Mario Calvino and his wife, Eva Mameli, were Italo's parents. Following his birth in Cuba in 1923, the Calvino family returned to Sanremo in 1925 to inaugurate the Station: Italo resided here until he reached the age of 20 years. Sanremo is a recurrent theme in his writings, often depicted as an imaginary city or a repository of memories.

The writer refers to Villa Meridiana in his autobiographical essay La strada di San Giovanni. The edifice, once encompassed by a garden full of rare and exotic plants, is now a private residence. Along the narrow Via Meridiana, there is a gate with the plaque "Villa Meridiana". Beyond this portal, one may observe what remains of Mario and Eva's luxuriant Garden of Eden: a car park and a series of apartments, among which one can search for the window from which Italo looked out.

The Villa Meridiana was formerly situated in a panoramic position, offering a view of Sanremo's Old Port and the surrounding countryside. However, the vista is now obscured by a proliferation of buildings, obstructing the view of the sea and the city centre. These places, along with their evolution and the urbanistic changes undergone by the city during the 1960s, a period marked by economic boom and mass tourism, frequently resurface in Calvino's writings. Thanks to the itinerary promoted by the town to mark the writer's centenary in 2023, it is possible to trace various sites between Calvino's pages and reality. The book Italo Calvino, Sanremo e dintorni. Un itinerario letterario (1923-2023) (Il Palindromo, 2023) has been created, gathering 43 significant places, each marked by a permanent tourist panel containing notes referring to Calvino's texts and a QR code for further exploration online. This is the first guidebook of its kind, which invites visitors to discover Sanremo from a writer's point of view, thus opening up new possibilities for literary tourism in a densely touristed area. The itinerary is also associated with the history of the twentieth century and the transformations the city has undergone since World War II.

The charm of the Pigna, for instance, has remained unaltered. The old medieval town resembles a pinecone: perched on a hill, it is dotted with winding, narrow, uphill streets, rich in towers and crisscrossed by arches. It is through these narrow streets that Pin, the protagonist of Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, moves. In the opening scene, Pin finds himself in the carrugio lungo, a fictionalised name that aptly describes one of the narrow, damp-smelling alleys the sun struggles to penetrate. This intricate network of streets unveils evocative vistas, such as the Via Romolo Moreno, culminates in Piazza dei Dolori and extends towards the Regina Elena Gardens, offering a panoramic vista of Sanremo.

Nearby lies a notable landmark of the city, the sanctuary of the Madonna della Costa. Adjacent to the church, a pedestrian path known as Strada San Romolo emerges, wherein another residence with a documented association with Calvino can be found. This residence, known as Villa Terralba and today as Villa Assunta, was initially owned by Calvino's paternal grandparents. It is a private house in which the Calvino heirs still live today. The Visconte Dimezzato Medardo holds dominion over the county of Terralba, which is unsurprising. The villa is situated in a panoramic position overlooking the city, nestled amidst a vineyard and olive grove landscape. Notably, the villa's garden features a great avocado tree, which may have fascinated the young Italo and served as a source of inspiration for Il barone rampante.

The road known as Strada San Romolo persists in its uphill trajectory, akin to another route, the Strada di San Giovanni. The path to Mario Calvino's farm, situated at a considerable altitude above the city, was partially obscured by urban development. It commenced at Villa Meridiana, traversing a series of paths and walkways along the course of the beodo, the irrigation canal. In the contemporary era, an ascent to San Giovanni can be undertaken by following a path that is similar to the one from Strada San Pietro. As one traverses, the urban landscape gradually transitions into a natural one: the Baragallo Bridge demarcates the boundary between the urban and rural landscapes. The journey culminates at the church of San Giovanni, adjacent to the Calvino property. The vista, marred by the presence of the motorway viaduct, fails to do justice to the locale.

From the Pigna, one can retrace one's steps back to the centre of the city. This is achieved by navigating a labyrinth of alleys leading to the Rivolte di San Sebastiano, a covered passageway. This is followed by Via Santo Stefano and Piazza Cassini. The route will lead to Piazza Nota, where, discreetly positioned on the side of a large school building, there is a plaque that the municipality dedicated to Italo Calvino in 1988. The building, formerly a convent, served as the Liceo Cassini in the late 19th century, a school attended by Italo Calvino. Another educational institution currently occupies the site, with the Cassini School having relocated to the former Hotel Excelsior-Bellevue in 1966-67.

Proceeding in a westerly direction, one arrives at Piazza Eroi Sanremesi. From this square, in the direction of the hill, two bustling streets branch off: Via Martiri della Libertà and Via Pietro Agosti. A cursory glance at the dense mass of buildings that characterise these thoroughfares offers insight into the sentiment expressed by Quinto Anfossi, the protagonist of La speculazione edilizia, in his description of a city in which the thirst for easy profit had led to the most insidious forms of construction, ultimately destroying the garden city of Italo's childhood.

Via Matteotti is the central street of Sanremo. Proceeding in an easterly direction, Via Carli will become visible on the right. The Francesco Corradi Civic Library is located there and houses the Mario and Eva Mameli Calvino collection donated to the city by their sons. The library also houses a collection of Italo Calvino's publications and a substantial collection of critical texts dedicated to the writer.

A short distance further along Via Matteotti is the Cinema Centrale, a historic Art Nouveau cinema built in 1924. In this cinema, the young Italo took refuge in the afternoons, as he recounts in Autobiografia di uno spettatore, describing his passion for the seventh art and the days spent in the cinema, imagining the world from the big screen. The Centrale boasts a distinctive architectural element in the form of a substantial dome embellished by the renowned Galileo Chini, facilitating air circulation. The Art Deco façade continued with an atrium, fragments of which remain today in the clothes shop next to the cinema.

Turning back towards the sea along Corso Mombello, one encounters the imposing sight of the Forte di Santa Tecla. The edifice, which now functions as a museum, was initially constructed by the Genoese in 1756. It subsequently came under the occupation of Napoleonic forces, who converted it into barracks. From 1864 to 1997, the structure was utilised as a prison. Notable among the prisoners was Mario Calvino, who was interrogated by the SS in November 1944, along with his son Italo, who had recently joined the partisans. This episode is recounted in La stessa cosa del sangue and Angoscia in caserma.

The fortress overlooks an area known as Pian di Nave. Adjacent to it is the Old Port of Sanremo, which appears in the final scene of La formica argentina and in Un bastimento carico di granchi. The latter describes a group of children setting off from Piazza dei Dolori in the Pigna to dive into the sea towards a sunken ship, a vessel that, in reality, remained in the port from the war years until 1946.

The beach, presumably that of Corso Imperatrice, is a prominent feature in Flirt prima di battersi, which portrays a wartime summer and a desolate, grey Sanremo shoreline. Within this setting, young people and the local bourgeoisie seek respite from the hardships of the period. The protagonist, as well as the author himself, had not yet encountered the experience of partisan life, which would subsequently lead him to depart from the city and venture into the hinterland.

In conjunction with Sanremo, these areas constitute a landscape that unmistakably influenced Calvino's worldview, shaping his perspective and enabling him to perceive the modest town of Sanremo as "a glimmer of all possible cities". In his famous interview with Maria Corti, Calvino acknowledged the city's pervasive presence in his literary works. It happens not only in Le città invisibili, where Sanremo occasionally surfaces as a source of inspiration despite the absence of any explicitly identifiable place but also in Dall'opaco, a descriptive prose piece that, while eschewing direct mention of urban locations, eloquently demonstrates how the city's landscape served as a cognitive map for the writer, a "geometrical place" – as the author himself articulates – from which all his fascinating journeys would begin. Discovering the real places that influenced Calvino and where he lived is, therefore, not just a way of practising literary tourism but of immersing oneself in a space that has acted at the deepest level on the imagination and creativity of a writer who, even though he moved away from Sanremo, never stopped looking at the world as if he were looking out of the windows of Villa Meridiana.

How to cite this entry: Chiappori, A. (2025). Sanremo and Italo Calvino: A literary tour. In R. Baleiro, G. Capecchi & J. Arcos-Pumarola (Eds.), E-Dictionary of Literary Tourism. University for Foreigners of Perugia. https://doi.org/10.34623/zdg2-hn59