Poet and playwright

He was born on 12 October 1788 from Stefano and Angela Maria Fossati, in Sanremo.

After completing his Latin studies, as they were called then, at the College of Sanremo, he went to Rome where he put on the habit of the Society of Jesus, which he laid down shortly afterwards to go first to Genoa and then to Sarzana. He travelled all over Europe as tutor to a young man from an English family.

He returned to Italy in 1838 and taught at the college of Sanremo and then at the college of Menton, where he remained until the year the County of Nice was annexed to France, when he returned to Sanremo.

He wrote poems and Latin charms, but he devoted himself to translations: he translated the Aeneid, the Georgics, the Bucolic, the Fasti of Ovid, and the poetic art of Horace, the Batracomiomachia and many other works. In 1840, on the occasion of the inauguration of the new cemetery, he published the poem "Novum Sepulcretum Romulense" dedicated to Siro Andrea Carli.

However, the work for which he is best known is the poem "Civitas Sancti Romuli, sive Remopolis" in four books published eight years after his death by Stefano Martini who added the Italian translation and a commentary.

He died on 10 October 1864 in Sanremo and was buried in a cemetery tomb in the mouth.

The Commission for the IV Census of the Population of the Kingdom, in 1901, named the street that leads from Porta Santo Stefano to Via Dante Alighieri, once called Via Costa, after him.

(source : Marco Mauro)