Mayor and Notary Public

Born in Sanremo on 4 March 1844 to Stefano and Anna Ameglio, he practiced the profession of notary and began his political activity by joining the constitutional party.

On 20 April 1899 he was one of the promoters of the Constitutional Association, founded by the most authoritative exponents of the Constitutional Party to gather and coordinate the forces of all those who wished to remain faithful to their country's institutions, promoting the civil and political development of the country and protecting its moral and material interests.
The Association also aimed to encourage the civil and political education of citizens and committed itself to taking part in the political and administrative elections of the city and province, also reserving the right to form a provisional or permanent electoral committee.

On 21 October 1899 the Association took over as mayor from Vincenzo Manuel Gismondi, who had resigned.

During his administration numerous public works were carried out and important measures were adopted, including the completion of the Arenella road, Corso Cavallotti and Strada delle Banchette; the widening and arrangement of Via Vittorio Emanuele II at the western entrance, where a crossroad named after Giuseppe Verdi was opened, leading to the railway station square; the construction of a drinking water pipe in the hamlet of Verezzo, the construction of the pavement in via Berigo and the Federico Guglielmo promenade, the construction of the Meteorological Observatory; the opening to the public of the Municipal Library, the establishment of the School Patronage, the reduction of the fee and finally the unification and conversion of municipal loans.

In the meetings of the Municipal Council of 8 and 9 November 1900 it was also decided to set up a public slaughterhouse managed by municipal administration staff, which would be definitively authorised by the Prefect of Porto Maurizio on 7 May 1901. He was also interested in the strengthening of the railway connections between Sanremo and the main European cities with the aim of encouraging the flow of tourists to our city, which in those years was establishing itself as a winter health resort known internationally as a destination for the most prestigious European aristocracy.

In 1900 a new building master plan was also approved, called Lamborizio after the engineer who prepared it, which was then ratified by royal decree on 14th August 1904. This master plan, which would shape the urban structure of the city for over thirty years on the strength of a ministerial extension, represented the first attempt to plan the entire urban area between the Foce and SanMartino streams, but always with the exclusion of the Pigna district.
The projects envisaged by the Lamborizio plan were however only partially carried out in the period before the First World War, when some of the planned crossroads were opened and the Mazzini and Cavallotti courses were laid out to the east, and Imperatrice, Matuzia and Hugo to the west. In the central area was instead built Via Volturno, extended Via Roma and Piazza Sardi, Corso Carlo Alberto and Via Vittorio Emanuele were placed, but not extended. On the other hand, the most important projects foreseen by the urban development plan in the area between piazza Colombo and via Manzoni and via Crispi were not carried out and were not
The great artery Berigo-France and via Martiri della Libertà were not even built; however, via Feraldi was extended, via Massabò was built and the market square was enlarged.

In August 1899 the Ministry of Public Works had in the meantime authorised the execution of repair and maintenance works at the west pier of the port for a total amount of twenty thousand lire. At the end of the nineteenth century the Matuziano port was gradually transforming from a commercial port to a tourist port, also due to the lack of hinterland and connections with Piedmont, as well as its extremely peripheral position. At the beginning of the twentieth century port traffic did not even reach the 50,000 tons of goods transited annually and was carried out exclusively by sea. Such a situation did not
It therefore allowed aspirations from a large commercial port, as also attested by the refusal of the State Railways on 20 March 1900 to install a connecting track between the port and the railway station.

After resigning as mayor in July 1901, he returned to the position of first citizen following the victory of the constitutional party in the May 1915 local elections.

During the years of the First World War, its administration undertook in particular to offer an adamant accommodation to the numerous refugees coming from the front, setting up, thanks to government and private funding, the Refugee House inside a building located in Via Arenella.
This house was used as a collection centre for refugees coming from Veneto and Trentino, many of whom would be fully integrated into the local socio-economic environment and would later remain permanently on the Riviera, while others would return to their homelands at the end of the conflict.

After the end of the hostilities, his Council, which in the war period had limited itself to ordinary administration, vigorously resumed its activity proposing to move the coastal railway upstream with an allocation of 5 million lire in 50 annual instalments.
During 1919, after Augusto Lurati's retirement, the Town Council had meanwhile entrusted the management of the Municipal Casino to the two French entrepreneurs Roques and Archiprétre, on the basis of a five-year concession at a fee of 400,000 lire per year minus all taxes.

However, the serious financial situation of the Municipality and the strenuous opposition of the socialist councillors led him to resign shortly after the resignation in the hands of the Prefect of Porto Maurizio Adolfo Cotta, who dissolved the Town Council in December 1919 appointing Francesco Gardella as prefectural commissioner.

A little more than two years after the end of his administrative mandate, he died in Sanremo on 7 March 1922.

(source: Andrea Gandolfo)