We don’t know much about the older generations of the Giannini family. They hailed from an isolated corner of Liguria, the gorge of the Fontanabuona, the village of Favale, cut off from the populated coast and a challenging place from which to eke out an existence. Not until 1892 was the road to the Lavagna valley opened up, and even then it continued to be plagued by landslides.
Amadeo Peter Giannini’s parents didn’t wait for the road. In 1869, Luigi Giannini and Virginia Demartini, like so many before them, embarked on a journey to America–to the golden lands of California. They eventually settled near San José, working in a hotel. They didn’t waste any time. In 1870, Peter was born.
By contrast, I wasted some time in the Genova train station, waiting to be whisked back to where I left off the day before. (Having arrived on the south side of town, and with my route continuing southward from there, I felt no need to make the gratuitous round-trip walk in and out of the center. I consider this personal growth!) Instead of checking the train schedule and arriving accordingly, I assumed there would be regular trains throughout the morning commute. It all depends on what one means by “regular,” I suppose.
Regardless, I was back on the trail before too long, trying to settle into a rhythm on the Via della Costa. This route, which provides an essential link between the Via Francigena and Camino de Santiago, allowing for pilgrims to make the long journey linking Rome and Santiago de Compostela, has ebbed in attention in recent years. The waymarks, such as they are–including badly faded yellow arrows and very occasional stickers–have been badly neglected. Fortunately, it mostly overlaps other established routes, like the Sentiero Liguria, and so there are often other signs to follow. After days of intensive quad work in the mountains, the relentless stairs of the Via della Costa have transformed my walk into a calf attack. There’s a pattern to the walk, as I ascend from the main road up, up, up through different levels of lovely houses, before finally emerging on a narrow walking path. There’s barely enough time, though, for my heartbeat to normalize, before I plunge downward again.
Even if I can’t see the sea, the buildings of Liguria are a feast for the eyes entirely on their own. It begins with the bright colors–pinks, yellows, oranges, and the like. The Internet will tell you that sailors opted for these colors because it made it easier to spot their homes from the sea. Color me skeptical. Regardless, I’m much more fascinated by the decoration going on beyond those initial paint choices. From the moment I crossed into Liguria in Torriglia, it has been striking how many buildings are adorned with frescoes and trompe-l’œil features, like fake stones, false windows, and all manner of floral devices. To some degree, they were just trying to keep up with the Joneses. As Renaissance mansions swept across Genova in the 15th and 16th centuries, featuring all kinds of exciting new architectural elements, less wealthy residents wanted to capture that flavor on a more modest budget. If you can’t afford your own stone cornices, why not just paint them on? As for the fake windows, it turns out that Genovese residents were taxed based on the number of windows they had opening up onto the road. Who wants to pay more taxes than they have to? Certainly not billionaires and Genovese home owners! Finally, as the Renaissance swept across Italy, the market became glutted with painters. For every Raphael, you had a few Ralphs, just trying to make a living. A job’s a job.
Peter Giannini, having grown up in the Bay Area, landed a great job. He became a banker. It wasn’t an easy ride; his father was shot to death when he was four, but his mom endured, taking over the family business and raising three kids, including Peter. And he didn’t just become a banker; he founded a bank. The Bank of Italy. He had noticed that most banks in those years catered only to the wealthy; he wanted to make banking available to the middle and working classes, with a special eye towards Italian immigrants. Two years after he founded the bank, in 1906, San Francisco was devastated by a massive earthquake, which leveled 50,000 homes and businesses. Giannini was undeterred. In the midst of a shaken mob of terrified San Franciscans, he propped up a table, with a sign on top reading, “Bank of Italy: Open for Business.” He offered loans for reconstruction that nobody else would, declaring, “We continue lending money as we did before, only more than before.” A substantial part of the city was rebuilt through his loans, and in the process the Bank of Italy grew rapidly, while also earning respect among city leaders.
The Via della Costa led me into Camogli, a marvelous town situated just on the northern edge of the Parco di Portofino–a tree covered bluff protruding into the Mediterranean that is dashed with hiking trails. While the town gets more money from tourism than the sea these days, it was once a major port, known as the “city of a thousand white sails.” The popular legend associated with the name is that Camogli has been shortened over the years from “Casa de Moglie,” or “house of wives.” The story goes that when sailors took to the seas, they tucked their wives away in a kind of residential community–to keep them honest, I suppose. The town is far less prudish these days.
My plan had been to camp on the hill above Camogli, and that would have worked out great. The problem, though, is multiple rounds of rain and lightning passing through the coast, so instead I pushed on, up and over the bluff, before spending the night in Rappalo. The next morning, I set off early, and was rewarded with the rare sight of a grey heron, remaining oddly at ease as I came within just a few meters of it. I couldn’t decode the omen, so I climbed back into the hills instead, dropping down into the wonderful little town of Zoagli an hour later, and then climbing right back up. Finally, after another jarring descent, I had earned a respite in the extended valley below, walking through the twin towns of Chiavari and Lavagna.
I couldn’t have picked a better morning to see Chiavari. For this short window, the clouds parted just enough to allow the buildings to erupt in vibrant color, and in the center I discovered the weekly market already in full swing. The conditions were very different when Peter Giannini visited here on November 7, 1945. By that point, Giannini’s little financial-establishment-that-could had expanded, merged, and been renamed as the Bank of America, and Giannini wanted to visit its branch office near his ancestral home, after already holding meetings in Rome earlier in the week.
World War II had ended. The Allies had won. Italy, however, had taken the full brunt of the disaster, and like San Francisco four decades earlier, resources were desperately needed to support a rebuilding. The Mayor of Chiavari, Colombo Sannazzari, had painted a bleak picture just a month before, writing that, “The municipal finances are exhausted!” Somehow, mouths needed to be fed, jobs needed to be created, the railway line needed to be rebuilt, schools needed to be opened… and yet there were no liras to be found.
Mayor Sannazzari wasn’t without hope, though. His eyes were turned towards some deep pockets across the pond: “Fellow citizens! Our brothers, who in the great America, in the fields, in the factories, and in commerce, have carried out their tireless and prosperous activity, will feel profound joy when they can see that their brothers in Chiavari have proved themselves worthy of such highly civic and humanitarian work, and in their thoughts they will hasten the day when they themselves will be able to give tangible proof of their enthusiastic affection for the Fatherland, which is preparing to rise from its ruins, for their native or adopted country which alone, an example to all the sister cities of Italy, has been able to rebuild a new, more beautiful and flourishing life.” If that sounds pretty blunt, just wait until you see the mayor’s comments on the region’s favorite son: “the greatest banker in the world, the Bank of America, with $5 billion in deposits.”
This time, though, Giannini didn’t have to rely on a small, upstart bank’s resources. He had the full might of the Bank of America behind him, in conjunction with what would become the Marshall Plan–a plan that he would take a direct role in administering. And as he did, he continued to take a personal interest in how those resources were distributed in his beloved Liguria.
My respite concluded, I climbed back into the hills. Largely denuded of trees, this smaller bluff offered some of the finest views so far, especially when my destination–Sestri Levante–emerged into view, with its narrow peninsula jutting out into the Mediterranean.
Giannini, of course, wasn’t the only person attending to the needs of those suffering in the wake of war. Sestri Levante has its own famous figure, Venerabile Padre Enrico Mauri. In 1922, on the heels of a different global war, and after beginning his religious career as a secretary to the bishop of Bobbio, he launched the Opera Madonnina del Grappa, with an initial goal of taking care of war widows and orphans. The organization has continued to grow over the years, though its function as an orphanage has remained central to its mission over the years. It also runs the facility where I am staying in Sestri Levante tonight.
Mauri was elevated to the level of venerable in 2018; the work continues to qualify a miracle attributed to him, in order to move him forward to canonization. As for me? I’m moving forward to an early bedtime.
