Monèglia (Moneggia in Ligurian) is an Italian town of 2 713 inhabitants in the metropolitan city of Genoa in Liguria.
The territory of Moneglia is located on the
Riviera di Levante, at the mouth of the Val Petronio, east of Genoa, on
the border with the Cinque Terre. It is 54 km from Genoa, 52 from La
Spezia, 39 from Portofino, 18 from Chiavari.
Monilia already
existed in Roman times and is mentioned in the Tabula Peutingeriana
which is kept in the national library of Vienna. Around the year 1000
olive growing is already witnessed, and a hundred years later Genoa
begins to fortify the territory, which contends with the Malaspinas;
1176 is the year of the probable construction of the Castle of
Villafranca. Moneglia follows the events of the Genoese Republic, to
which it always remains linked. In 1290, two links of the chain that
closed the port of Pisa, defeated by Genoa, were placed on the facade of
the church of Santa Croce. Joined with all the Genoese Republic of the
Savoy State after the Congress of Vienna, it arrived at the Unity
following the destinies of all the Italian regions. Moneglia is the
homeland of the painter Luca Cambiaso, who was born there in 1527.
Neighborhoods
Its municipal territory also includes the towns of
Bracco, Casale, Camposoprano, Comeglio, Crova, Facciù, Lemeglio,
Littorno, San Lorenzo, San Saturnino and Tessi.
By plane
Cristoforo Colombo Airport in Genoa. It is connected to
the Genova Brignole railway station with the Volabus, a coach service
calibrated at national and international arrivals.
Direct flights:
Milan Malpensa, Turin, Cagliari, Naples, Palermo, Catania, Alghero,
Olbia, Trapani, Trieste, Rome Fiumicino. International flights: London
Stansted, Paris CDG, Cologne, Munich, Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona,
Istanbul. edit
Galileo Galilei Airport in Pisa. It is more convenient
to reach the Riviera di Levante, La Spezia or the Cinque Terre as it is
directly connected by train.
By car
Both coming from Sestri
Levante and from Deiva Marina, the coastal road obtained from the old
railway tunnels is used.
Very suggestive, even if not very
comfortable, the old tunnels are more unique than rare, if you think
that until the 1920s they were still used by trains, before the line was
moved further upstream. Due to their conformation, transit through the
tunnels is prohibited for bicycles, pedestrians and caravans.
Toll booths on the A12 Genoa - La Spezia motorway: Deiva Marina or
Sestri Levante.
The center of Moneglia is crossed by the coastal road
"delle Gallerie", which allows the road connection of the town to the
west with Sestri Levante passing through Riva Trigoso, and to the east
with Deiva Marina in the province of La Spezia.
Provincial roads 55
of Moneglia and 68 of Facciù start from Moneglia. Both then connect on
the hills behind the town with the SS1 Via Aurelia.
On boat
During the summer season there is a tourist boat service which, starting
from the town's pier, connects Moneglia with Portofino, San Fruttuoso di
Camogli, Porto Venere and the Cinque Terre.
On the train
Moneglia
station is located on the Genoa-Pisa line and is served by rail
connections with the nearby Cinque Terre.
The local public transport services managed by the AMT guarantee daily bus connections between Moneglia and the other towns in the municipal area; some buses also connect the municipality to the nearby towns of Deiva Marina, Framura, Riva Trigoso and Sestri Levante.
Fortress - tower of Villafranca. The fortress-tower of Villafranca
was an ancient defensive and sighting settlement, commissioned by the
Republic of Genoa in the 12th century, located on the first slopes east
of the town of Moneglia in the province of Genoa.
The fortress,
smaller and less important than the second city castle of Monleone, was
built by the Republic of Genoa around 1130 and underwent various
alterations during the 14th and 15th centuries due to the strong
contrasts between the Genoese republic and the Malaspina family. It was
restored before the Second World War by the then owner Luigi Burgo.
Further and heavier damage occurred during the war conflict of the
Second World War, but recently the safety of the building by the
municipality has allowed the adjacent park to be opened to the public.
Currently in the vicinity of the ruins of the ancient fortress stands a
villa which has architectural similarities with it.
Fortress of
Monleone. The castle was built on the western hill in 1173 by the
Republic of Genoa and the consul Ingone di Flessa. The building work
lasted for a whole year, so much so that in 1174 it was severely
besieged by the soldiers of Count Obizzo Malaspina, the latter allied
with the Da Passano and Fieschi families. Three thousand infantry and
one hundred and fifty cavalry attacked the fortress which, despite the
strong war pressure of the assailants, managed to resist thus allowing
the Genoese republic to send a further reinforcement army. The
contingent that arrived from Genoa not only managed to defend the
Monegliese manor, but also took away the nearby local castle from the Da
Passanos.
Currently within the original settlement of the castle of
Monleone there is a small castle in Art Nouveau style (also called
"Castello De Fornari", owned by Angeloni) built in the early twentieth
century, as well as private houses (some still under construction).
1 Parish Church of Santa Croce, via Vittorio Emanuele. It rises in
the eastern part of the town. According to some sources, the
construction of the church could have taken place in 1130; the current
church was built with a single nave in 1725 on the remains of the
previous structure which collapsed for unknown reasons. In the facade,
in Baroque style, two rings of the chain of the port of Pisa are visible
on the right side; according to historical sources these objects were
stolen, as a sort of "war trophy", by fellow citizen Trancheo Stanco in
1284 during the battle of Meloria between the Genoese and Pisan naval
fleets and which saw the former victorious.
In the third altar on the
right side it preserves a statue of the Immaculate Conception,
attributed to Anton Maria Maragliano, in the fourth left altar a
Byzantine crucifix and a canvas portraying the Madonna delle Grazie. By
the local painter Luca Cambiaso is the work Last Supper kept in the
sacristy.
2 Oratorio dei Disciplinanti, via dell'Oratorio (near
the parish church of Santa Croce). Currently of Baroque appearance,
originally the building, which according to some local sources would
appear to date back to the 10th century, was dedicated to the Virgin
Mary and obtained the subsequent denomination with the establishment of
the local brotherhood of the Disciplinanti. Outside the oratory there is
a plaque and a cross dating back to 1291 indicating the figure of two
Florentine people - Rolando and Berardo Lanieri - buried in the church.
Inside there are various and precious cycles of frescoes, recently
restored, depicting the Life of the Madonna and the Passion of Jesus.
3 Parish Church of San Giorgio, Via Fratelli Botto. It is located in
the western part of the town near the overhanging fortress of Monleone.
Its construction dates back to 1396 by the Benedictine monks who were
replaced in 1494 by the Franciscan friars. The parish was established in
1414 by the Archbishop of Genoa, Monsignor Pileo de' Marini, separating
it from the previous parish community of Santa Croce.
Inside it
preserves a wooden group of San Giorgio and the dragon from the school
of the sculptor Anton Maria Maragliano; a canvas of St George slaying
the dragon attributed to Pieter Paul Rubens; a polyptych with San
Lorenzo between Santa Chiara, San Paolo, San Francesco and San Leonardo
with a Baptism of Christ in the cusp, attributed to Giovanni da Pisa; a
polyptych with San Ludovico enthroned between Saints Antonio abate,
Ambrogio, Stefano, Nicola and other saints inserted in the cusp and in
the predella, by Giovanni da Barbagelata; a Madonna with Saint Peter,
holy bishop and souls in purgatory by Carlo Dolci; an Adoration of the
Magi by Luca Cambiaso native of Moneglia.
The cloister
The
adjacent cloister was built by the Franciscan friars in 1484 with the
support of the then Doge of the Republic of Genoa Paolo Fregoso, as well
as Archbishop of Genoa, who obtained the consent of Pope Sisto IV. In
the following centuries, first the de
The adjacent cloister was built by the Franciscan friars in 1484
with the support of the then Doge of the Republic of Genoa Paolo
Fregoso, as well as Archbishop of Genoa, who obtained the consent of
Pope Sisto IV. In the following centuries, first the Napoleonic
decree of 1817 and the subsequent one of the Kingdom of Italy in
1866, compromised the activity of the cloister so much that the
friars definitively abandoned Moneglia. Today the plant has been
converted into an exclusive Bed and breakfast, a member of the
Historic Hotels of Europe.
Church of San Rocco (in Bracco).
Built at the end of the 17th century just outside the town, on the
remains of a pre-existing building dedicated to St. Peter, it was
dedicated to the saint of Montpellier and almost certainly took
place after the mournful pestilential period that struck Genoa and
its republic in the 17th century. The building, which has kept its
original seventeenth-century appearance, has a single nave with an
apse. edit
Parish Church of Santa Maria Assunta (in Lemeglio).
Parish of the hamlet of Lemeglio since 1413, as stated in a notarial
deed of the time, it preserves inside a painting by the painter
Domenico Piola depicting the Madonna with Child and Saints. It has a
facade in the traditional Ligurian-Tuscan marble layout with
two-tone stripes.
Olive Oil Festival. Easter Monday.
Pumpkin Carnival. in February.
with floats.
Double Yellow. In the month of July. A week-long review
dedicated to mystery and noir literature, with the participation of
writers, crime writers and criminologists.
Feast of the Holy Cross.
Festival at the homonymous parish.
The main product of this strip of Ligurian land is olive oil, which in recent years obtained the DOP "Riviera Ligure di Levante" DOP. Moneglia oil goes well with fish dishes and the Mediterranean diet.
The territory of Moneglia is located on the Riviera
di Levante, east of Genoa, of which it is the last eastern
municipality of the metropolitan area, and about 30 km from La
Spezia and about 60 km from Genoa.
The town is located within
a large bay bordered by two promontories, both rich in Mediterranean
vegetation and pine forests: to the west extends the promontory of
Punta Moneglia and to the east that of Punta Rospo. While the first
is entirely wild and reachable only by paths, which go upwards as
far as the Comunaglia and Moneglia mountains, the second has several
residential areas up to the town of Lemeglio.
The Monegliese
area is mainly crossed by two torrential streams, often dry or with
little flow in the warmer months, and by numerous streams that
descend from the hills around the town. In the western part of the
village flows the San Lorenzo stream, covered in its final stretch
and used as a road and parking, while the Bisagno stream flows to
the east.
The climate is typical Mediterranean,
without, except for rare occasions, thermal excesses in summer and
episodes of frost in winter. However, rainfall can be abundant,
especially during autumn and spring, due to the orography of the
Riviera di Levante.
From a legislative point of view,
Moneglia falls under the climatic classification D as the city has
1547 degrees per day, therefore the maximum limit allowed for
switching on the heating is 12 hours a day from November 1st to
April 15th.
The ancient toponym of Moneglia (ad
Monilia) appears in the Peutingeriana Table, a copy of the military
map of the Roman Empire (11th - 12th century) preserved in the
Austrian National Library in Vienna, discovered by the antique
dealer of Augusta, Corrado Peutinger, in the 16th century .
The village, already inhabited by the Ligurian Lapicini population,
was a very important center in Roman times thanks to its strategic
position on the ancient Via Aurelia. Mentioned in a charter of the
Empire of the year 14 and in the "tabula alimentaria" of 117 (in the
latter document the area of Lemmelius, the current hamlet of
Lemeglio is expressly mentioned), the historical importance of the
Monegliese territory is further witnessed and highlighted by the
historian Agostino Giustiniani in the Castigatissimi Annals of the
Republic of Genoa of 1537.
During the seventh century, in the
Lombard period, Liguria was conquered by king Rotari and
subsequently the Lombard king Liutprando favored the spread of
monasticism with the monks of Bobbio who came down to the area of
Moneglia and in the Ligurian east from the possessions of the val
d ' Aveto, Sturla and Fontanabuona. They developed the territory
with numerous farms and monastic cells.
Charlemagne with the
imperial diploma of 5 June 774 donated the territory and the port to
the Colombanian monks and to the abbey of San Colombano di Bobbio,
founded by San Colombano in 614; together with the other Ligurian
possessions they favored trade and agriculture with links to the Po
Valley. The monastic order directly owned the port, Alpe Adra, with
all the Val Petronio, Mount San Nicolao, the coast between Sestri
Levante, the town and the tip of Moneglia and Deiva Marina and the
hinterland between Casarza Ligure and Castiglione Chiavarese and
also the whole territory up to the Montelungo di Pontremoli forest.
The naval port as for Porto Venere, were the naval ports of the
monastery of Bobbio, which traded with the East since the seventh
century bringing the spices that with the salt guaranteed the
preservation of food, especially proteins, and arabic gum for
illuminated manuscripts of the scriptorium.
In the Middle
Ages, like other coastal towns of eastern Liguria, it suffered the
invasion of Saracen pirates who sacked the town; in particular, a
widespread local legend states that the present-day hilly settlement
of Lemeglio was stormed in the 11th century by pirates with the
killing of almost all the inhabitants and the kidnapping of over
twenty girls and women. The Monegliese fiefdom was administered
until 1153 by the Fieschi di Lavagna counts and from this period it
became the territory of the Republic of Genoa. The republic erected,
in 1173, the fortification of Monleone, whose remains are still
present; already in 1174 or 1176 the latter was besieged by about
3000 infantry and 150 knights of the military alliance between
Obizzo Malaspina with the Fieschi and the local Da Passano counts.
Moneglia, as well as the other feuds loyal to Genoa, participated
alongside it in 1284, with its own ships, in the famous and
victorious battle of the Meloria and that of Porto Pisano against
its rival Pisa for commercial domination over the seas; according to
tradition, Genoa, as a gesture of gratitude, donated to the
community of the small village some links of the chain that was used
to close the mouths of Porto Pisano, the latter still embedded in
the external wall of the church of Santa Croce.
In 1397 the
alliance between the Bertolotti families of the village of Levanto,
the Malaspina and the Ghibellines of the fiefdom led to a new
assault on the fortress of Monleone which, after an exhausting
siege, had to yield to the conquerors. The village suffered the same
fate between assaults and fires, despite a courageous popular revolt
forced the assailants to barricade themselves in the newly conquered
castle. During the dedication of Genoa to the Duchy of Milan, in
1425, the former republican doge Tomaso Fregoso, lord of Sarzana,
subjected Moneglia to his own feudal domain. In the clashes that
followed, the bell tower of the Monegliese parish was destroyed. An
alleged alliance or plea bargaining of the Monegliese community
towards the Fieschi family led, in 1477, to a sort of Genoese
"punitive expedition", dominated at that time by the Sforza of
Milan, with looting and the payment of a fine of two thousand scudi.
With the settlement of the autonomous powers of the republic,
around the sixteenth century, Genoa elected Moneglia as the capital
of the local podestà with jurisdiction over the entire surrounding
territory, over today's hamlets and localities of the municipality
and the neighboring Deiva Marina (Lemeglio, Deiva, Mezzema Agnora ,
Littorno, Scaro, Stozio, Comeglio, Camposoprano Camposottano, San
Saturnino Tessi, Borghetto Bracco, Casale, Vallecalda, San Lorenzo
and Crova). The request to the Genoese Senate for the construction
of a new defense and sighting tower in the fortress of Villafranca
dates back to 1549. In 1637 with the election of Levanto as a local
capital of the republic, it was also subjected to the jurisdiction
of the Monegliese podestà until the Napoleonic domination of the
late eighteenth century. During the war of the Austrian succession
of 1747 the presence of the Spaniards is witnessed in the village of
Moneglia: in fact, a death certificate of a Hispanic soldier was
deposited in the parish archive of Santa Croce in 1745; the
subsequent occupation of the French dates back to 1748.
With
the French domination the municipality returned from 2 December 1797
to the Department of Entella, with Chiavari as its capital, within
the Ligurian Republic. From 28 April 1798 the municipality of
Moneglia and the hamlets of Lemeglio and San Saturnino returned to
the VII canton, as the capital, of the Jurisdiction of Gromolo and
Vara and from 1803 the main center of the VII canton of Gromolo in
the Jurisdiction of Entella. Annexed to the First French Empire,
from 13 June 1805 to 1814 it was included in the Department of the
Apennines. On 11 July 1809, the passage through the Bracco pass of
Pope Pius VII, a prisoner of French soldiers, traveling from Rome to
the land beyond the Alps is documented.
In 1815 it was
incorporated into the Kingdom of Sardinia, according to the
decisions of the Congress of Vienna in 1814, which submitted the
municipality of Moneglia in the province of Chiavari under the
division of Genoa. From 1859 to 1926 the territory was included in
the III district of Sestri Levante in the Chiavari district of the
then province of Genoa, in the Kingdom of Italy.
After the
loss of 37 citizens in the Great War of 1915-1918, the Monegliese
community had to undergo various and mournful air raids (June 14,
June 29 and November 1, 1944) during the crucial and final phases of
the Second World War, aimed at the destruction of the overlying
railway bridge along the Genoa-La Spezia line moved, in 1924,
further upstream from the original route close to the cliff. It was
the former tunnels of the previous railway line that served as a
refuge for the population, now converted into a connecting road
between Sestri Levante and Moneglia.
From 1973 to 31 December
2008 he was part of the Val Petronio mountain community.
On
10 August 2012 a group of Genoese divers, at about 150 m depth,
spotted the wreck of the steamship Enrichetta, a boat loaded with
railway material and which was sunk by a submarine of the German
Imperial Navy on 30 June 1917. It appears The wreck of the destroyer
Gioberti, which was sunk on 9 August 1943 by the British Navy
submarine Simoom near Punta Mesco, has not yet been found and is
missing.
The main product of this strip of Ligurian land is olive oil, which in recent years obtained the DOP "Riviera Ligure di Levante" DOP. Moneglia oil goes well with fish dishes and the Mediterranean diet, of which Ligurian cuisine is one of the highest expressions.
In addition to the main nucleus, the municipal territory includes the
hamlets of Bracco, Casale, Camposoprano, Comeglio, Crova, Facciù,
Lemeglio, Littorno, San Lorenzo, San Saturnino and Tessi for a total of
15.61 km².
It borders to the north with the municipality of
Castiglione Chiavarese, to the south it is bordered by the Ligurian Sea,
to the west with Casarza Ligure and Sestri Levante and to the east with
Deiva Marina (SP).
Tourism is very important, Moneglia offers its tourists a variety of attractions. It has large sandy beaches (free, paid and equipped), numerous rocky beaches and a large number of coves that can only be reached by sea. There are numerous naturalistic itineraries on the hills around the town. The rocky coast of Moneglia is famous for the presence, in certain areas, of walls equipped for climbing. The seabed also offers many attractions for diving enthusiasts, especially along the rocky coasts.
The cultivation of the olive tree is widespread on the hills of the town and has allowed, over the last few decades, the birth of various oil mills where production, especially of a family nature, is now widespread. Vines are also widely cultivated, especially on the hills between San Saturnino and Lemeglio, from which the "Bianco di Moneglia" wine is obtained.
On 29 September 2002 Gianluca Genoni, an Italian freediver, set the
world record (-132 m) in Regulated Variable Weight in the waters of
Moneglia.
In football the only team in Moneglia is currently the
A.C.D. Moneglia militant in the Second Category championship.
Historical clubs were the A.S.D Monilia Calcio 1991. The A.C.D. Moneglia
football 1988 plays its home games at the "Fratelli Cevenini" sports
field in Deiva Marina, while the A.S.D. Monilia Calcio 1991 from 1 July
2019 merged with the SS.Segesta Special Service company of Sestri
Levante.