Genoa through art and memory. Stories at Staglieno

Staglieno Monumental Cemetery is one of Genoa’s most iconic places: an open-air museum where art, memory and civic history intertwine. Among funerary monuments, sculptures and architecture of exceptional value, Staglieno also preserves traces of the history of Genoa Cricket and Football Club, told through the lives of those who shaped its sporting, cultural and social identity.

The monumental cemetery contains the graves of many figures associated with Genoa: founders, directors, footballers, members and people connected with the city’s sporting and cultural life. This heritage of remembrance allows us to explore Genoa’s history through both its sporting achievements and the lives of those who, across different eras, contributed to the Club’s growth and its deep roots in the city.

Among the most significant figures is Edward Algernon Le Mesurier, one of Genoa’s founders, an intellectual with a deep knowledge of the city and the author of the 1889 book Genoa. Her history as written in her buildings. Le Mesurier rests in the English Cemetery at Staglieno, an area that preserves materials from the former San Benigno Cemetery, whose protection he himself had helped secure. Alongside him lie other prominent figures in Genoa’s history, including Geo Davidson, a symbol of the Club’s early years and a cycling champion, Giovanni De Prà, the Club’s celebrated goalkeeper and an Italian international, and numerous directors, athletes and members active during the early decades of Italian football.

The trail also includes figures from culture and entertainment with a deep affinity for Genoa, such as Fabrizio De André, Gilberto Govi and Mario Cappello, who wrote and performed the Club’s first anthem, Semmo do Zena. Working in different fields and forms of expression, they shared a sense of belonging to Genoa and its popular culture, of which the Club remains one of the strongest symbols.

This trail of remembrance presents a picture of Genoa that extends beyond the pitch: a Club woven into the city’s history and its social, cultural and human stories. Staglieno thus becomes an integral part of the museum experience, linking past and present as individual memories become the shared heritage of the Genoa community.