The palace of the Franzoni marquises was standing empty when a Lavagna farmer who had emigrated to Argentina, Lazzaro Repetto, bought it and, from 1907, put it back to work as a hotel under the sign “Hotel Palace Repetto”. Twenty-four years later the town took it back: a public subscription allowed the municipality to buy it in 1931 and turn it into the town hall, which still occupies the building raised in 1696.
What to see
The name comes from the first owners, the Franzoni marquises, and the palace counts among the most notable buildings in Lavagna. Its history, though, is not in the rooms but in the changes of use, one after another, and each change brought a different public: nobles, soldiers, patients, travellers, residents queuing at a counter. A patrician home until the end of the eighteenth century, in 1797 it was occupied by the French troops who arrived with Napoleon Bonaparte.
Then came cholera: during the violent epidemics the building was turned into a hospital and, once the emergency passed, it stood empty for decades. The hotel years of the early twentieth century and the public purchase of 1931 close the circle. Today it holds the municipal offices and faces piazza della Libertà, in the middle of town, a few dozen metres from the collegiate basilica of Santo Stefano.
Visiting
The address is piazza della Libertà 47: a few minutes on foot from the railway station, with the seafront just beyond. This is a working town hall, so you go in during office hours; there are no tickets and no guided tours, and the front on the square remains the simplest way to look at it. At weekends the counters are closed and only the exterior is left.
Our editors' tip
We would pair the stop with Palazzo Ravenna, the former Carmelite convent that served as Lavagna's first town hall: when the offices moved to Palazzo Franzoni in 1931 that building was freed up, and since 1994 it has housed the civic library named after Giovanni Serbandini. They are a few minutes apart and together they tell the same move from both sides. If you are in town on 13 and 14 August, the old centre is taken over by the Torta dei Fieschi pageant: the palace becomes a backdrop, but the festival is worth the trip.