In 1862 Giuseppe Garibaldi was brought here wounded after the day of Aspromonte, and in 1867 he came back for treatment after Mentana: the Varignano was then a prison and a military hospital. The fortress holds the headland that divides the cove of Le Grazie from the Varignano inlet, in the Gulf of Poets, and it began as something else entirely: in 1724 the Republic of Genoa built a lazaretto with a goods warehouse here, finally acting on a decision the Genoese Health Magistracy had taken in 1656.
What to see
The complex keeps the low, closed layout of the Genoese lazarettos, later grown into a military installation. The turning point came with the Napoleonic years: from 1797, under the Ligurian Republic, the site was converted, and on 11 May 1808 it passed to the French war navy, which installed the military command of the gulf and its garrison here. In those same years Santorre di Santa Rosa began studies for building a modern naval arsenal on the spot. After Napoleon fell, the Varignano went to the Kingdom of Sardinia and then to the Kingdom of Italy, serving as prison and hospital.
Its second life is an underwater one. In 1910 the diving school of the Regia Marina, founded in Genoa in 1849, was moved here, and the headland has not changed trade since: the assault-craft units trained here through both world wars, and since 1952 the fort has been the base of the navy's frogmen. Today it houses the “Teseo Tesei” diver and raider command; the barracks carry the name of the naval engineering major awarded the gold medal for military valour.
Visiting
Let us be clear at once: this is a working naval base, closed to the public, and the gate on the road to Le Grazie does not open. The Varignano is looked at from outside, and that is worth doing: the profile of the point and its piers read perfectly from the seafront at Le Grazie and, better still, from the water, from the boats that link Porto Venere with La Spezia along the cove. There are no opening hours and no tickets because there is no visit: anyone turning up hoping to get in goes home again.
Our editors' tip
We tack it onto half a day at Le Grazie: the village and its sanctuary first, then the stretch of seafront from which the whole point is visible. If you can, arrive by sea on one of the boats running the La Spezia route: from the water you understand in seconds why the navy chose this finger of rock, which plugs the inlet like a stopper. Keep the camera ready, because the fortress shows itself for a couple of minutes and then vanishes behind the headland.