On the evening of 15 April 1796, after several days of battle in the province of Savona, Napoleon Bonaparte received the flags of the enemy in a room in the palazzo belonging to the noble Del Carretto family in Millesimo, today the municipal seat. This episode has been passed down to us in an engraving by Delanoy of 1838, in which the victorious general, seated on a sofa in a dimly lit room, receives the homage of the defeated: we are in the Alcove, as this room was called, which a few years later would also accommodate Pope Pius VII, made prisoner by Napoleon and confined to Savona.
Also in Millesimo and also in memory of the epic battles of the Italian Campaign of 1796, a Napoleonic Museum was set up in the picturesque Villa Scarzella, built as a summer home at the end of the eighteenth century by Giuseppe Scarzella and purchased by the municipality of Millesimo in 1979. The museum houses numerous graphic reproductions representing the people and events of Napoleon’s military campaign in the province of Savona.
Napoleon’s Alcove
Palazzo Comunale
Piazza Italia 2
Millesimo (Savona)
The Palazzo Comunale is open every day except Sunday 9 AM to 12 PM; The Alcove may be visited on request
Napoleonic Museum of Villa Scarzella
Via Del Carretto 29
Millesimo (Savona)
The museum may be visited on request at the Biblioteca Comunale
http://www.itinerarionapoleonico.com/