Quezzi, Genoa — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Quezzi?

The bell tower may have been a fighting tower. Marassi and Quezzi were bitter rivals in the Middle Ages and their people came to blows in 1300, the Ghibellines of Quezzi against the Guelphs of Marassi, and a tower raised beside the church at that time is probably the campanile standing now. One oratory came later.

Santa Maria Maddalena was built for the confraternity of the same name in the second half of the 15th century. One family name here reached America. Susanna Fontanarossa, mother of Christopher Columbus, was born in that same period into a family of the Ginestrato.

What is the history of Quezzi?

The first notices are older than the year 1000. Quezzi, anciently Queci, had grown in the upper part of the Fereggiano valley by then, and the area already carried small settlements whose names survive in the modern map, Vegoli which is now Egoli and Zinestedo which is now Ginestrato. It won its own consuls in 1190.

The population had grown enough by that year for Quezzi to take the right to name its consuls to the Republic of Genoa, which is an unusual thing for a hill hamlet to hold. It outgrew its neighbours. With the hamlet of Vegori it counted more than two hundred and fifty people in the 16th century against about two hundred each at Marassi and Fereggiano.

Administration came from the valley floor. In the 17th century the parish of Quezzi depended on the pieve of San Martino d'Albaro, and the boroughs of Marassi and Quezzi both belonged to the Podesteria del Bisagno.

Where is Quezzi?

Quezzi occupies the valley of the rio Fereggiano on the hills above Genoa, bordering Marassi, San Fruttuoso and Sant'Eusebio, with the rio Molinetto and the rio Finocchiara joining to form the stream.