SAVONA  , a seaport and episcopal see of

Liguria, Italy, in the province of Genoa, 27 M . W.S.W. of Genoa by rail, 33 ft. above sea-level, and after Genoa and Nice the most important of the cities of the Riviera . Pop . (1906) 43,836 (town); 46,778 (commune) . The greater part of the town is. now modern . It is surrounded with green-clad hills and luxuriant orange groves . On the Rock of St George stands the castle built by the Genoese in 1542, on the area of the old cathedral and now used as a military prison .. The cathedral (1589–1604) is a late Renaissance building with a modern dome and early Renaissance choir-stalls, puplit, &c . Tn the Cappella Sistina, to the north, stands the simple, finely carved tomb erected by Sixtus IV. to his parents . Facing the cathedral is the Della Rovere palace erected by Cardinal Giulio della Rovere (Julius II.) from the plans of Giuliano da Sangallo as a kind of university, and now occupied by the prefecture, the post-office and law-courts . S . Maria di Sastello has a large altarpiece by Foppa and Brea (of 1490) .

There is a municipal picture-

gallery in the hospital of St Paul . The Teatro Chiabrera was erected in 1853 in honour of the lyric poet Chiabrera, who was born and. buried in Savona . Four and a half miles W. is a pilgrimage church of the Madonna della Misericordia, founded in 1536 . The modern harbour, dating from 1815, has since 188o been provided with a dock excavated in the rock, 986 ft. long, 46o ft. wide and 23 ft. deep . Savona is one of the chief seats of the Italian iron industry, having iron-works and foundries, shipbuilding, railway work-shops, engineering shops, brass foundry, tinplate works, sulphur mills and glass-works . It imports commodities to the value of nearly 2,0oo,000 yearly, half of which is coal, with petroleum, iron, cereals, &c . In 1906, 777,000 tons of shipping, of which about half was British, and most of the rest Italian, entered . There is a small export trade, chiefly in iron sheets, chemicals, wood and candied fruits . The potteries export their earthenware to all parts of Italy . There is a railway through the mountains from Savona to Turin (91 M . N.N.W.) . Savona is the ancient Savo, a town of the Ingauni (see ALBENGA), where, according to Livy, Mago stored his booty in the Second Punic War .

A buried

Roman bridge lies near the stream, which has now changed its course . The place was never of importance in Roman times, the traffic passing to Vada Sabatia (Vado), 4 M. to the W., which was a harbour, and the point to which the coast road from Rome was reconstructed in 109 B.C., and from which a road diverged across the Apennines to Placentia . In 1191 it bought up the territorial claims of the marquesses Del Carretto . Its whole history is that of a long struggle against the preponderance of Genoa . As early as the 12th century the Savonese built themselves a sufficient harbour; but in the 16th century the Genoese, fearing that Francis I. of France intended to make it a great seat of Mediterranean trade, rendered it useless by sinking at its mouth vessels filled with large stones . In 1746 it was captured by the king of Sardinia, but it was restored to Genoa by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle . Columbus, whose ancestors came from Savona, gave the name of the city to one of the first islands he discovered in the Antilles .