English Poetess and friend of Giuseppe Garibaldi

Caroline Giffard Phillipson was born in 1823 to Baron Sir John Hesketh Lethbridge, of a noble British family.

Caroline was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria and in 1849 she married the knight John Thorpe Burton-Phillipson, to whom she was soon widowed.
As a poet she was best known in her homeland for two of her books, 'Eva' and 'Lonely Hours', as well as other publications.
She travelled extensively in Italy and stayed in Florence and Rome.

She moved permanently to Sanremo where she lived in one of the villas of the mayor Bartolomeo Asquasciati, to whom she bequeathed her library and Garibaldian memorabilia.
A fervent admirer of Giuseppe Garibaldi, whom she met in Turin on 9 April 1861, it is not known exactly what their relationship was, whether it was one of friendship or, as some say, a real love affair.

What is certain is that there was a rich and dense correspondence with letters written by Lady Caroline Giffard Phillipson on the one hand and by the Hero of the Two Worlds on the other, and today, thanks to a donation by Asquasciati, they are jealously preserved in a fund at the Sanremo Civic Museum together with precious mementoes: a ring with the inscription "O Roma o morte" (Rome or death), a lock of hair, a snuff box, a headdress and autographed photographs.

She died in Sanremo on 2nd February 1893 at the Hotel Londra. Phillipson, a supporter, like many of her fellow countrymen, of the Italian Risorgimento epic and to whom she had dedicated some intense poems, rests in the monumental cemetery of the Foce.

(based on the book "Sanremo e l'Europa, l'Immagine della Città tra Otto e Novecento" edited by Letizia Lodi; ediz. Scalpendi, 2018)