Francesco Cilea spent the last years of his life in Varazze and died there in 1950; in the house on via Guglielmo Marconi the study where he worked has survived untouched. The composer, born in 1866, was an honorary citizen of the town, and together with his wife Rosa Lavarello he left the building to SIAE, the Italian authors' society. Both surnames stayed in its name: Villa Lavarello Cilea.
What to see
Of the original property the main building remains, and everything that counts is inside it: the composer's study is the room that stayed intact, the one nobody dismantled after his death. That is why this house is more than a plaque on a wall: Cilea's craft still has a physical place, and not only a folder in an archive in another city.
The garden is the part that lost most: only a portion of it survives. It was eaten away first by the old railway line, which ran right past, and then by the buildings put up afterwards. The story is common to half of Liguria, but here it has a name and a known owner, which makes it legible: walking round, you understand how much larger the park at the composer's disposal once was.
Visiting
Villa Lavarello Cilea stands on via Guglielmo Marconi, inside the built-up area and on the flat. Varazze lies on the Riviera di Ponente, about thirty kilometres west of Genoa and eleven north-east of Savona, and it has its own railway station, a few minutes away on foot. Openings are not continuous, so check in advance whether visits or events are scheduled; otherwise you look at the exterior and make do with what is left of the garden.
Our editors' tip
We come by train and give the place a whole afternoon. After the villa we walk the Passeggiata Europa, the four and a half kilometres laid on the bed of the old single-track Genoa-Ventimiglia line, abandoned in 1970 and restored from 2007 onwards. It is the same infrastructure that took half the garden from Cilea's house: here, with the rails gone, it gives back lit tunnels, Aleppo pines and coves under green rock all the way to Cogoleto.