Before they were Corsican, the Bonapartes were from Sarzana: the family is documented here from the thirteenth century as notaries and merchants, and only in the 1500s did a branch emigrate to Ajaccio. Sarzana also gave the Church Tommaso Parentucelli — Pope Nicholas V, founder of the Vatican Library.
Heir to ancient Luni, this Val di Magra town of 21,829 residents sits between two formidable pieces of military engineering: the hilltop fortress of Sarzanello and the Firmafede citadel, rebuilt by Lorenzo the Magnificent's Florentines after the 1487 conquest. Every late summer the Festival della Mente, Italy's first festival devoted to creativity, fills its squares and cloisters.
Near Sarzana
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
