Italy · Liguria · Genoa
San Desiderio, Genoa — Area Guide & Where to Stay
San Desiderio is a residential quarter of Genoa at the head of the Sturla valley, its parish church dating from the thirteenth century.
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Where to stay in San Desiderio
How the choice of base plays out on the ground.
Houses here come in clusters, not a single village. San Desiderio holds the rioni of Pomà, Canaisa and Premanico below the Serra di Bavari, and the walking is the reason to come out, with paths across the wooded hills around the settlement. Pomà sits highest.
It stands in the old Valle Ursaria on the slopes of Monte Fasce, almost emptied of people, keeping its church and an old osteria that has been restored. Genoa proper holds the rooms.
About San Desiderio
What are the main landmarks in San Desiderio?
The church of San Desiderio dates from the thirteenth century. It is dedicated to Desiderius of Langres, whom an old tradition makes a native of the upper Sturla valley, and it is still the parish church. San Lorenzo is older on paper.
The church in Premanico is cited in a document of 953, though the building standing there was raised in 1652 and holds a painting of Saint Clare by Giovanni Battista Baiardo. Two more churches and a ruin remain. The oratory of San Giacomo of 1619 stands by the small bridge on the old road to Bavari, Sant'Alberto in Pomà is seventeenth century, and the chapel of San Terenziano in Premanico survives only as ruins.
Mazzini spent his childhood near piazza Armando Grosso.
What is the history of San Desiderio?
Genoa administered San Desiderio from the Middle Ages. The republic held it first in the podesteria del Bisagno and then in the capitaneato from 1606, and for centuries it lay under the civil and religious jurisdiction of Bavari. Napoleon changed all that.
The community went into the Bisagno department in 1797 with San Martino d'Albaro as its capital, then into the sixth canton of Nervi, then from 1803 into the fifth canton of San Martino d'Albaro. It became part of Apparizione in 1804. That commune was annexed to the First French Empire from 13 June 1805 until 1814, and the Congress of Vienna placed Liguria in the Kingdom of Sardinia the year after. Italy took it in 1861.
Apparizione belonged to the second mandamento of Nervi from 1859 until the commune was abolished in 1926 and folded into Greater Genoa.
Where is San Desiderio?
San Desiderio lies at the northern head of the Sturla valley in the Municipio IX Levante of Genoa, below the Serra di Bavari, with the rioni of Pomà, Canaisa and Premanico and Nasche and Bavari alongside.
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Updated September 2026