The Palazzi dei Rolli, where visitors meet history

Over 97 thousand visitors, with 42% of those booked being under 45 years of age and 38% coming from outside Liguria. These are the numbers that closed the most recent Rolli days event, two weekends in September, during which (as has been the case for the past three decades, several times during the year) Genoa's most beautiful noble palaces are opened to tourists and visitors. Those in which the most illustrious families of the Republic hosted, in turn - and on the basis of a compulsory draw, made on the lists of public lodgings, called, precisely, Rolli - the personalities (mainly nobles and exponents of reigning houses) on a State visit to Genoa.

In short, the Palazzi dei Rolli have become, to all intents and purposes, one of the tourist attractions of the Ligurian capital; but also arousing great interest are the stories of the families that these buildings have inhabited and, in part, still inhabit. One of these dynasties is that of the Pallavicino, one of the oldest feudal families in northern Italy (in descent from the Obertenga lineage), capable of expressing, over the centuries, senators, doges of the Republic of Genoa (three) as well as the 16th Genoese Albergo, i.e. one of the institutions under which the various houses of Genoa were grouped, taking the name of the most important family (while the original surname could be kept next to that of the Albergo).

Two residences of the Pallavicino family, Villa delle Peschiere and Palazzo Interiano Pallavicino, are now part of the Rolli circuit, and the latter houses the Pallavicino Ets Foundation, inaugurated in 2019 by Prince Domenico Antonio Pallavicino who, lacking direct descendants, created the entity with the aim of preserving and continuing the family's memory. Critic Vittorio Sgarbi is artistic director of the foundation, which works to increase its collection and also promotes exhibitions of ancient art.

The organisation's most recent initiative is the publication of an imposing volume entitled I Pallavicino di Genova (The Pallavicinos of Genoa), which, in 662 pages, traces the excursus of a family that, over the course of more than 800 years, held important public offices, government roles, diplomatic posts and high military ranks, while also managing to reconcile financial transactions and mercantile activities with a good dose of patronage in the artistic and social fields.

'This volume dedicated to the history of my family,' explains Prince Domenico, 'is a work that constitutes a fundamental contribution to the reorganisation of the family's historical heritage, which I have vowed to enhance and hand over, intact, to the city that was its cradle. Many publications have, over the decades, valorised individual personalities, palaces, and works of art of the family, but one was lacking that provided a broad and comprehensive overview of the ancient clan or, as they used to say in Genoa, Albergo, which was, for centuries, among the protagonists of the political, economic, and social life of the city and its domain'. The essays collected in the volume, writes Sgarbi in the book's preface, 'explore the importance of Cardinal Antoniotto Pallavicino's Missal of the Nativity, an illuminated codex for the liturgical functions of the Sistine Chapel; the support for the counter façade of the church of San Siro, of which the Pallavicino family assumed the patronage; the commissions for works by Rubens and Van Dyck; the sculptures of the Pallavicino family at the monumental cemetery of Staglieno, with works by Santo Varni and Augusto Rivalta'.