Finale Ligure historical timeline

History

Finale was a marquisate before it was a town, and the shape of it is still on the ground. The Del Carretto ran it from a hill palace above Finalborgo, the walled capital; Genoa wanted the port, Spain wanted the road, and each of them rebuilt the defences to suit. Genoese sappers finished the castle in 1715 and left the thing you now climb: Castel Gavone as imposing ruins on the Becchignolo spur, with the keeled, diamond-cut Torre dei Diamanti standing out of them and a lift inside it to the top. The three towns below stayed three towns until 1927.

Chronology

641 Rotari's conquest ends Byzantine control of the Finalese, documented by excavation at Varigotti and at the castrum of Sant'Antonino. Liguria's oldest Christian evidence was found at Perti, the frazione that now holds Castel Gavone.
967 First written record of the territory: Otto I's diploma grants Aleramo of Monferrato lands including the castle of Orco above Finale. The border it describes is the one the comune still shares with Orco Feglino.
1162 Frederick Barbarossa invests Enrico del Vasto — Enrico I Del Carretto — with the Marca di Savona, Finale included. The same diploma names the Castrum Perticae, a fortification perhaps older than the Lombard invasion, which the growth of Finalborgo would empty out from the thirteenth century.
1172 Enrico I or his son Enrico II build a caminata, a feudal palace, on the Becchignolo hill above Finalborgo; Enrico II enlarges and fortifies it in 1217. That hill is Castel Gavone and the walk up to it starts in Perti.
1290 Genoa imposes commercial conventions on the Del Carretto, repeated in 1340, because it holds almost every other port in Liguria and Finale is the gap; in 1385 doge Antoniotto Adorno's sentence hands it half the fief, a ruling the emperor never recognises. Every fortification later built in the comune was built against the rivalry those three documents set up.
1448 Genoa invades, destroys Finalborgo and partly demolishes Castel Gavone; Giovanni I Del Carretto rebuilds the castle between 1451 and 1452. The rebuilt core is the masonry the ruins are made of.
c. 1490 Alfonso I Del Carretto adds the triangular block ending in the Torre dei Diamanti, shaped like a ship's keel and sheathed in diamond-point rustication, to take artillery fire from the seaward slope. The lift inside it now runs to the top of the tower, where the view takes in the whole Finalese.
1496 Maximilian I grants Alfonso I full investiture of the marquisate, confirmed to his son Giovanni II by Charles V in 1529. The marquisate is at its largest, reaching over the watershed into the val Bormida as far as Saliceto and Paroldo — the stretch of inland Liguria and Piedmont the hill frazioni still look onto.
1558 Genoa invades again, using a revolt against Alfonso II's misgovernment. Work on the rectangular outer circuit at Castel Gavone stops with Del Carretto rule, and the unfinished line of it is traceable round the ruins.
1602 Spain takes Finale for good. The marquisate stays formally an imperial fief with the king of Spain as its feudatory, and becomes the only Spanish-held port at the end of the Cammino spagnolo, the corridor running from the Milanese through the Valtellina to the Netherlands. Every church and castle in the Finalese is restructured or refortified on the strength of it.
1643 The Spanish build Castel San Giovanni below Castel Gavone to deny the slope to enemy guns; Gaspare Beretta cuts away the rock spur on the north side in 1674 and adds a traverse, a point and a covered way. Both works still dominate Finalborgo from above.
1700 Charles II of Spain dies and the succession crisis opens; Spanish rule over Finale, after more than a century, ends officially in 1707. Philip V had stayed at Palazzo Buraggi in 1702, and the palace is still there in Finalmarina.
1713 The Republic of Genoa formally acquires the marquisate and governs through a governor. It blows up Castel Gavone in 1715 and still struggles to hold the Finalese, which rises against it in 1730 and 1734.
1795 Napoleon's army invades during the Italian campaign and the old marquisate is finished. Finale passes through the Dipartimento della Maremola from 2 December 1797, the Giurisdizione delle Arene Candide from 1798 — the cave's name doing administrative duty — and the Dipartimento di Montenotte from 1805 to 1814.
1815 The Congress of Vienna puts the three territories into the Kingdom of Sardinia, and from 1861 the Kingdom of Italy. From 1859 they sit in the IV mandamento of Finalborgo, in the circondario of Albenga and the province of Genoa.
1927 A royal decree-law of 2 January creates the province of Savona and, in the same act, the comune of Finale Ligure out of Finalborgo, Finalmarina and Finale Pia. It is why one comune has three centres, three parish churches and three street grids, and why the road signs still name the nuclei rather than the comune.
1944 Under German occupation and the Italian Social Republic the anti-Jewish persecutions reach Finale: Albertina Reutlinger, an elderly Jewish woman, is arrested on 13 February and dies at Auschwitz. Piaggio workers are deported to Mauthausen in reprisal for the general strike of 1 March; four pietre d'inciampo were set in the pavement for them on 21 January 2019.
1989 Castel Gavone is given to the comune on 29 December, which runs a first phase of works to conserve the ruins and open them. That campaign is why the Torre dei Diamanti can be climbed at all.

What survived, and what did not

Finale's monuments were destroyed deliberately rather than by neglect, twice, and both demolitions were Genoese: Castel Gavone in 1448, rebuilt within four years, and again in 1715, when it was not. Castelfranco — raised by Genoa in 1365 against the Del Carretto and later ringed with outworks whose bastions ran down to the Finalmarina shore — went the same way, and the Castrum Perticae simply emptied as the capital grew. The village that shared Castel Gavone's name was pulled down to build the sixteenth-century walls. Even the name is unsettled: Gavone and Govone are both attested in fourteenth-century documents, Govone prevailing to the end of Spanish rule as castillo Govon, and the older form is coming back into use. The comune's recovery campaign since 1989 has stabilised the ruins rather than rebuilt them, so what stands above Perti is a blown-up castle made safe to walk in, with one tower nearly whole.

Verified against Wikipedia, October 2026.

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Checked against Wikipedia — The numerous archaeological finds recovered in the caverns and caves of the territory of Finale have allowed historians to date the first human settlements to the Palaeolithic; among the most important prehistoric sites is the cavity of the Arene Candide, in which was found the "burial of the Young Prince", considered by historians one of the oldest Palaeolithic tombs in Europe. The caverna delle Arene Candide lies to the west of the promontory of the Caprazoppa and holds numerous burials, among them that of a boy of sixteen or seventeen -- called the Giovane Principe -- of the Upper Palaeolithic, who died, according to the research and studies carried out, from the attack of a wild beast about 24,000 years ago. The caverna della Pollera, one of the vastest in the local and provincial district, has yielded important Neolithic materials, a sign that the territory of the Finalese was a very important creative centre, including exclusive forms of pottery with quadrilobate mouths; and the Arma delle Manie is one of the major caverns of the Ligurian Ponente, the seat of Neanderthal man. Numerous caverns inhabited by primitive man have been found in the territory, and their finds are placed in the archaeological museum of Finale., The Finalese remained under Byzantine control until the conquest by Rotari in 641, a Byzantine presence documented by archaeological excavation at Varigotti and in the castrum of Sant'Antonino. The first written record of the Finalese territory goes back to 967, when the emperor Otto I granted Aleramo del Monferrato many lands in a diploma, among them the castle of Orco, above Finale; Finale was inherited by Aleramo's descendant Enrico del Vasto, who obtained its investiture from Frederick Barbarossa in 1162 together with the other lands of the Marca di Savona. The Del Carretto marquisal family, descended from Enrico, constituted the powerful Marquisate of Finale here, annexing other minor fiefs, but clashed -- above all for commercial reasons -- with the Republic of Genoa, which owned almost all the ports of Liguria; Genoa imposed the commercial conventions of 1290 and 1340 on the Del Carretto, and in 1385 the republic acquired dominion over half the fief by a sentence issued by doge Antoniotto Adorno, never recognised by the emperor. Between 1447 and 1448 Genoa invaded the marquisate and destroyed Finalborgo and Castel Govone. In 1496 Alfonso I Del Carretto obtained total investiture of the marquisate from Maximilian I, confirmed to his son Giovanni II by Charles V in 1529; it was the period of the marquisate's greatest extent, which after the victorious war against Genoa had extended its dominions beyond the watershed into the val Bormida as far as Saliceto and Paroldo in the Alte Langhe. In 1558, taking advantage of the rebellion of some Finalese against the misgovernment of Alfonso II, Genoa again invaded the marquisate; Spain succeeded in taking possession of Finale definitively in 1602. The oldest Christian evidence in Liguria was discovered at Perti., Castel Gavone (or Govone) was the principal seat of the Del Carretto marquises, lords of Finale, situated near the present frazione of Perti. At the end of the twelfth century, most probably from 1172, Enrico I del Carretto or his son Enrico II established a "caminata" -- a feudal palace -- above the Becchignolo hill, the rocky spur that dominates Finalborgo, capital of the marquisate; it was enlarged and fortified by Enrico II in 1217. It was partly demolished in 1448 by the Republic of Genoa and immediately rebuilt by Giovanni I Del Carretto between 1451 and 1452. Over the following century the castle was further enlarged by Alfonso I Del Carretto, his son Giovanni II and his grandson Alfonso II; the design of these enlargements is a typical example of so-called "transitional military architecture" and seems inspired by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, whom Alfonso is likely to have met in Rome and perhaps in Milan. The first intervention was the addition of a triangular block culminating in the "Torre dei Diamanti" (circa 1490), a tower shaped like a ship's keel and covered with splendid rustication, which served to defend the castle from artillery attacks on the side of the slope descending towards the sea. Shortly afterwards, in the second or third decade of the sixteenth century, work began on an external rectangular circuit, completed in the last years of Del Carretto rule (before 1558). Further external works for the castle's security were carried out under Spanish rule: the principal one was the construction in 1643 of Castel San Giovanni, which protects the slope below Castel Gavone and prevents enemy artillery being installed there; the last important intervention, the work of Gaspare Beretta in 1674, was the cutting away of a rocky spur on the northern side, together with a traverse, a point and a covered way at the base of the outer circuit. The castle was demolished again by Genoese sappers in 1715, after the purchase of the marquisate by the Republic of Genoa. On 29 December 1989 the castle was donated to the Comune di Finale Ligure, which carried out a first phase of recovery aimed at conserving the imposing ruins and opening them to visitors., The name commonly used over the last two centuries is "Castel Gavone"; recently, however, under the influence of a deeper knowledge of the past, the name "Castel Govone" has come back into use. Both versions are attested in fourteenth-century documents; indeed Govone seems to prevail until the end of the Spanish epoch ("castillo Govon"). From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century the name coincided with that of the surrounding settlement, a frazione of Perti demolished in the course of building the sixteenth-century circuit of walls. The origin of the name is uncertain and may indicate ancient relations with Piedmont., Finale and its marquisate were protected by three castles, now partly demolished. Castel Gavone (or Govone) was the seat of the Del Carretto marquises of Finale from the twelfth century; despite the demolition of a good part of the castle, carried out in 1713 by the Republic of Genoa, the "Torre dei Diamanti" -- perhaps of 1492, keeled and rusticated -- constitutes an extraordinary example of seigneurial architecture inspired by the military architect Francesco di Giorgio. A first imposing lot of works has made the monument accessible to the public, and a lift allows one to climb to the summit of the tower, where there is a wide view over the Finalese. Castel San Giovanni, a typical Spanish fortress built in 1640-1645, dominates Finalborgo. Castelfranco, initially raised by the Republic of Genoa in 1365 in an anti-Carrettesca function, was modified and surrounded by other fortresses whose bastions reached as far as the coast of Finalmarina. The Castrum Perticae, cited in the imperial diploma of Frederick Barbarossa of 1162 in which the investiture of the Marca di Savona to Enrico I Del Carretto was formalised, may date from an epoch before the Lombard invasion and so from between the sixth and seventh centuries; the development and growth of the capital Finalborgo led from the thirteenth century to its slow decline and abandonment., The marquisate of Finale formed a strip of imperial territory on the Cammino spagnolo, which passing from the Milanese to the Valtellina reached as far as the Netherlands and was indispensable for the transport of troops directed to or coming from Spain or the Kingdom of Naples. The Spanish possession also brought a new revaluation of the cultural and religious patrimony of the marquisate, enlarged and revised in the sixteenth century, as well as a general restructuring and fortification of the castles and forts of the Finalese. Spanish domination lasted over a century and ceased officially only in 1707, after the crisis opened in 1700 at the death of Charles II of Spain., The expansionist aims of the Republic of Genoa absorbed the former pro-Spanish marquisate of Finale, with official acquisition of the possessions in 1713., The concluding page of the ancient state was the invasion in 1795 of Napoleon Bonaparte's French army, engaged in the Italian campaign. With the marquisate fallen, the Genoese republic suppressed and the Ligurian Republic constituted within the French Empire from 1805, Finale too followed the subsequent history of Ligurian territory, entering from 2 December 1797 the Dipartimento della Maremola with Pietra as its capital; from 28 April 1798, under the new French ordinances, it formed the capital of the I Cantone of the Giurisdizione delle Arene Candide, and from 1803 the principal centre of the V Cantone delle Arene Candide in the Giurisdizione di Colombo; from 13 June 1805 to 1814 it was placed in the Dipartimento di Montenotte. In 1815 the three principal territories were incorporated into the Kingdom of Sardinia, as the Congress of Vienna of 1814 established for the other comuni of the Ligurian republic as well, and subsequently into the Kingdom of Italy from 1861. From 1859 to 1927 the territory was included in the IV mandamento of Finalborgo in the circondario of Albenga, part of the province of Genoa; in 1927 it passed under the newly constituted province of Savona. Genoa governed the marquisate through a governor from 1713 but struggled to subdue the community of Finale, above all in 1730 and 1734 with the outbreak of local revolts. With the death of Charles VI of Habsburg in 1740 the territory was again subject to military movements, and Genoese dominion was confirmed by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle despite the ambitions of the House of Savoy., In the period of the German occupation and the Italian Social Republic, Finale Ligure too was struck by the anti-Jewish persecutions, with the arrest on 13 February 1944 of Albertina Reutlinger, an elderly Jewish woman; she would die at Auschwitz. From Finale some Piaggio workers were also deported to Mauthausen in reprisal for their participation in the general strike of 1 March 1944; four pietre d'inciampo were laid on 21 January 2019 in memory of Antonio Arnaldi, Giovanni Frattini, Italo Frattini and Goffredo Scacciotti, the last two of whom died in captivity., The urban structure of Finale Ligure is articulated in three principal nuclei, distinct comuni until 1927: Finalmarina (or Finale Marina), the zone of most recent urbanisation thanks to tourism, whose inhabitants are called gnabbri in the Finale dialect; Finalpia (or Finale Pia), situated on the coast, which conserves the original structure of the town; and Finalborgo (or Finale Borgo), the capital of the historic Marquisate of Finale, surrounded by the ancient fifteenth-century walls and overlooked by the Govone and San Giovanni castles., Finalborgo is one of the three urban nuclei forming the built-up area of Finale Ligure, a comune in the province of Savona; an autonomous comune until 1927, it was subsequently merged with Finale Pia and Finalmarina to constitute today's comune of Finale Ligure., Finalmarina, or Finale Marina, is one of the three urban nuclei forming the Ligurian comune of Finale Ligure, in the province of Savona; an autonomous comune until 1927, it was subsequently merged with Finale Pia and Finalborgo to constitute today's comune of Finale Ligure. The borgo lies along the sandy coastal strip, approximately between the mouth of the Pora torrent and piazza Oberdan., The hinterland of Finale Ligure presents numerous falesie and rock walls on which sport climbing is practised, with itineraries of difficulty up to 8c+. Between the end of the 1960s and the end of the 1980s the comune was one of the European centres in which climbing developed in a sporting key, distinguishing itself from traditional alpinism; after an exploratory phase, during which numerous itineraries were opened in traditional style on the most imposing rock structures, the practice of the discipline progressively oriented itself towards the search for ever greater difficulty on previously equipped itineraries. The equipping of itineraries of all difficulties then continued, so much so that around the 2020s these passed the figure of 4,000. Among the pioneers of Finale climbing are counted Gianni Calcagno, Alessandro Grillo, Vittorio Olinto Simonetti, Roberto Titomanlio and the brothers Eugenio and Gianluigi Vaccari; among the protagonists of the second, "sporting" phase figure Giovanni Massari, Martino Lang, Andrea Gallo, Patrick Berhault, Nicola Ivaldo, Luca Biondi, Marco Zambarino and Luciano Zambarino. (October 2026).