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Sturla (, ) is a quartiere of Genoa, Italy. It began life as an ancient fishing village which developed around a number of small coves – Sturla a Mare, at the mouth of the Sturla river, Vernazzola and Boccadasse (which is now included in the neighbouring quartiere of Albaro). Sturla is located in the Golfo di Sturla (Sturla Bay).
Sturla is part of the Medio Levante municipality, and has a population of 8278 inhabitants (as of December 31, 2010). In the 1800s the current quartiere was a commune of San Martino d'Albaro, while the village of Vernazzola was a commune of Albaro. However, both communes were annexed by Genoa in 1874.
The neighbourhood is home to the Villa Gentile athletics arena, as well as several public and private bathing facilities. A water purification plant has been built between Sturla beach and Vernazzola beach.
There are several schools in the district. There's a nursery school (Nini Corsanego) as well as a kindergarten (Bartolomeo Chighizola), both on the road leading from Piazza Sturla to Vernazzola beach. There's also a primary school dedicated to Ettore Vernazza, a middle school (Bernardo Strozzi) and the Martin Luther King high school that focuses on the sciences and was built in the 1960s.
The Genoese poet, Vico Faggi dedicated the following verse to Sturla:
As well as being a fishing village, in the past Vernazzola was an important landing ground from where it was possible to climb the Sturla valley, on through the quartiere of Bavari and into the upper Bisagno valley. Immediately behind the houses on the shoreline there once stood a Dominican Order convent with an adjoining hospital for travellers. In time, behind the coastal buildings there gradually arose grand villas of the aristocratic families of Genoa, and finally, in the early twentieth century, luxurious Art Nouveau villas. However, like Boccadasse, the village still preserves its ancient dwellings, the network of old streets and an atmosphere of a bygone era.
Some of the streets around Vernazzola have characteristic names inspired by ancient classical mythology: Argonauts, Jason, Icarus, Pelion, Urania. These names were chosen at the request of the last mayor of San Francesco d'Albaro, a passionate lover of the classical world, shortly before the annexation of the town to Genoa, in the second half of the 18th Century.
Along the road that leads around Capo di Santa Chiara, a distinctive vantage point dominated by the medieval styled Turcke castle, there are some eighteenth-century villas, the Augustinians convent and the church of Santa Chiara, founded in the sixteenth century.
Today the village, partly reduced in size by the opening immediately upstream of an enlarged road (Via Dei Mille), consists of a few houses clustered around the ancient Oratorio di San Celso, the existence of which has been documented since 1311 although it was rebuilt in the Baroque period and then completely rebuilt in 2002.
The church was built at the behest of two priests, Pietro Micichero and Domenico Verrucca, who had founded a congregation of secular canons. From 1441 it was officiated by the Canonici di San Giorgio in Alga, popularly called "Celestini", who remained there until 1668 when the congregation was dissolved by Pope Clement IX. It then passed on to the Order of Saint Augustine, who had to leave in 1797 due to Napoleonic laws which suppressed religious orders. It was then entrusted to secular clergy, becoming a branch of San Martino d'Albaro. It underwent several renovations and expansions, and became a parish in its own right in 1894. In the 1940s the church underwent a major restoration, which involved almost a total renovation of the building. La chiesa della SS. Annunziata di Sturla sul sito dell'arcidiocesi di Genova This reconstruction virtually erased the various reconstructions of the Baroque era to bring the building, at least in its essential structure, back to its original fifteenth-century form, although the restoration was undertaken in an interpretive and not scientifically rigorous fashion. The church has three , each complete with its own semi-circular apse. The side naves are separated from the central by four columns on each side connected by semicircular arches.
The facade was built freely reinterpreting the original style, with two monofora windows (narrow windows with an arched top and single opening), a central rose window and the original slate architrave above the entrance.
It contains notable works of art from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including a Madonna and Child and Saint Sebastian and Saint Roch (San Rocco). They’re of the Venetian school of the sixteenth century. There is also a Madonna and Child and Saint Anthony by Gregorio De Ferrari (1690) and a sixteenth-century fresco, again depicting Saint Sebastian and Saint Roch.
There are remarkable preserved frescoes painted between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century, while other works of art, including the altarpiece depicting the Saints Roch, Nazarius and Celsus, Catherine of Siena and Saint Sebastian, by Bernardo Castello, were transferred to the parish church of the Santissima Annunziata.
The oldest historical references regarding the area of Sturla refer to the frequent fights between Guelphs and Ghibellines that bloodied Genoa in the Middle Ages. There were also reports of clashes between the Grillo and Vento family in 1179.
In 1284, Oberto Doria, Captain of the People and Admiral of the Republic of Genoa, during the war against Pisa, which culminated on August 6 in the same year as the battle of Meloria, deployed his ships in front of the Sturla beach, waiting for the events to unfold.
On 26 November 1322 the Guelphs attacked the castle of Sturla, containing the garrison of the Ghibellines, who controlled the Bisagno valley. After two days the besiegers, who also possessed a trebuchet, pummeled the castle with stones, fatally weakening the walls, and the castle constructed by Antonio Doria was forced to surrender.G.Dellepiane, Guida per escursioni nelle Alpi e Appennini Liguri In 1363, during a banquet given by the nobleman Pietro Malocello in honor of Peter I, King of Cyprus, visiting Genoa, the Doge, Simone Boccanegra was mysteriously poisoned.
Sturla was once famous for its zavorristi, the men who loaded and unloaded the ballast required by sailing ships to maintain the right balance out at sea.
Piazza Sturla was more recently enlarged with a viaduct that leads from Via Caprera over the valley of the Vernazza river. Small secluded ancient fishing settlements still remain amongst this sea of modern roads.
From Piazza Sturla, Via Sturla and Via Isonzo lead to Corso Europa, a road built in the sixties, linking the neighbourhoods to the east of Genoa to the city centre.
The nearest motorway exit is Genoa-Nervi, on the A12, 4 miles from Sturla.
La Sportiva Sturla has organized since 1969 the "Memorial Morena", an international youth swimming meet, which is held every two years, and the "Miglio Marino di Sturla" swimming competition in the open sea, which has taken place since 1913, which over the years has seen amongst its competitors swimmers of an international standard. Among these we can mention in the men's Mattia Alberico and Marco Formentini, and in the ladies Paola Cavallino and Giorgia Consiglio (the women's race has been held since 1986). The ASD Urania di Vernazzola, established in 1926, is active in rowing and sport fishing.
The Circolo Nautico Sturla, founded in 1981 by some sturlesi is active in sailing, and pesca subacquea (fishing while scuba diving). The CNS is now one of the few clubs in Liguria to be awarded a title of Italian champion teams "Fishing SUB second category" (1997), and its athlete, Diego Romero, earned a bronze medal in the Laser class at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
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