A Genoese aristocrat, Girolamo Luigi Durazzo was one of the last doges of the Republic of Genoa before its annexation by France. He subsequently became a senator under Napoleon's First Empire, embodying the transition between the old republican order and the new French regime.
Girolamo Luigi Durazzo
Girolamo Luigi Durazzo
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Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born into the prestigious Durazzo noble family, one of the most influential in Genoa
- Elected doge of the Republic of Genoa in the late 18th century
- The Republic of Genoa was abolished in 1797 during Bonaparte's Italian campaign
- Appointed senator of the French First Empire following the definitive annexation of Genoa in 1805
- Represents the rallying of the old Genoese aristocracy to the Napoleonic regime
Works & Achievements
As one of the last doges of the Republic of Genoa, Durazzo held the supreme magistracy of a centuries-old institution, presiding over the final years of the Superba amid mounting revolutionary pressure.
Like other Genoese patricians, Durazzo had to adapt to the new French-style regime imposed by Napoleon, taking part in the difficult institutional transition between the old oligarchic order and the new republican government.
Appointed senator of the First Empire following the annexation of Genoa, Durazzo embodied Napoleon's policy of integrating local elites into the structures of the imperial state, ensuring a political transition free of organized resistance.
Anecdotes
In June 1797, when French troops imposed the dissolution of the Republic of Genoa and the creation of the Ligurian Republic, Girolamo Luigi Durazzo witnessed the erasure of an institution centuries old, of which his family had been one of the pillars. The sitting doge surrendered the insignia of power without armed resistance, marking the end of a patrician oligarchy that had governed the Superba since the Middle Ages.
The Durazzo family owned one of the most sumptuous palaces in Genoa, on the Via Balbi, adorned with art collections and frescoes accumulated over several generations. During the requisitions and redistribution of assets that accompanied the French arrival, these patrician residences became the symbol of a world in the process of disappearing, their owners urgently negotiating the survival of their heritage against the new revolutionary order.
Appointed senator of the First Empire after the annexation of Genoa to France in 1805, Durazzo joined a conservative Senate in Paris largely tasked with rubber-stamping Napoleon's decisions. His presence illustrated the imperial policy of integrating local elites: the former leaders of annexed territories retained honors and substantial income — the *sénatorerie* — in exchange for displayed loyalty to the regime.
During the Austrian siege of Genoa in the spring of 1800, the city suffered severe famine for several weeks before General Masséna's capitulation. The great Genoese patrician families were involved in the surrender negotiations and in desperate attempts to secure supplies, before the French victory at Marengo definitively shifted the balance of power in northern Italy.
The Republic of Genoa, founded in the tenth century, was one of the last aristocratic republics in Europe still standing at the end of the eighteenth century. Durazzo, heir to this centuries-old tradition, lived through the transformation of his homeland into an ordinary French department — the Department of Genoa, number 88 in the imperial nomenclature — an administrative and symbolic upheaval of unprecedented brutality for the former masters of the Superba.
Primary Sources
List of senators appointed by imperial decree, including notables integrated from the annexed territories of the Ligurian Republic, with mention of their prior titles and functions within the former republican institutions of Genoa.
Correspondence and notarial acts of the Durazzo family covering the transition from the Republic of Genoa to the Ligurian Republic and the French annexation, documenting the management of family assets and relations with the new imperial authorities.
Napoleon orders the integration of the leading Genoese patrician families into French imperial institutions in order to ensure the political stability of the newly annexed territories, specifying that it is important to cultivate the old families whose loyalty is useful to the consolidation of the new order.
Official announcements of appointments to the government of the Ligurian Republic, reflecting the gradual coexistence between the former patricians of the Republic of Genoa and new notables drawn from French and Italian revolutionary circles.
Official Parisian documents relating to the administrative organization of the new department of Genoa, specifying the procedures for appointing local notables to senatorial positions and their integration into the French imperial hierarchy.
Key Places
Birthplace of Durazzo and capital of the Republic of Genoa, then of the Ligurian Republic, then chief town of the French department of Genoa. *La Superba* was the stage for his entire political life and the radical transformation of its government.
The main residence of the Durazzo family, one of the finest Baroque palaces in Genoa on the Strade Nuove, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This palace embodied the power and culture of the Ligurian patrician oligarchy.
The seat of power of the Republic of Genoa, official residence of the doge, and venue for the great assemblies of the Genoese Senate. It served as the institutional setting for the exercise of dogal authority before being taken over by the authorities of the Ligurian Republic.
Seat of the Conservative Senate under the First Empire, where Durazzo served following his appointment. There he rubbed shoulders with former revolutionaries, Marshals of the Empire, and other notables from the annexed territories, in the capital of Napoleonic Europe.