Bordighera, a beautiful town on the Italian Riviera between the French border at Menton and the bustling port of Genoa, has a rich culture and moments of grandeur. One such moment was the adoption of the town by the most scintillating member of the Italian royal family, Margherita of Savoy (1851–1926), Queen of Italy by marriage to her first cousin King Umberto I of Italy. She was the daughter of Prince Ferdinando of Savoy, Duke of Genoa, and Princess Elisabeth of Saxony, and the mother of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. Although she had been visiting Bordighera from Rome since her late twenties, it was the assassination of her husband, King Umberto I in 1900, which influenced the Queen to decide to live there permanently, purchase a sublime villa and build a second one next door. As Sabine Noelle-Wying writes in Riviera Buzz (https://riviera-buzz.com/margherita-of-savoy-bordighera/), Queen Margherita “withdrew to the Ligurian Riviera to finally find peace again. Some places merely serve as a backdrop – and then there are those rare places that become a refuge. For Margherita of Savoy, Bordighera became precisely such a sanctuary: a place of longing shaped by light, sea air, and quiet elegance. Shaken by the weight of history and searching for a new sense of balance, she discovered in Bordighera something that went far beyond mere retreat. The town became an emotional anchor.”
This captivating period in the history of the Italian royal family and of Bordighera forms the basis for a new book, entitled Regina Margherita a Bordighera – Soggiorni, incontri e memorie nel Ponente ligure (Queen Margherita in Bordighera – Sojourns, Encounters and Memories on the Western Italian Riviera) by accomplished author Gisella Merello. The book is in Italian for the most part but those of us not fluent in Italian are grateful for the excellent English summaries and image captions.
Gisella’s research is always first class and the book is terrific… both authoritative and charming in the mass of anecdotal details. I expected a well-researched and brightly-written book from my friend and colleague Gisella and that is what I find. She manages to record a lot of splendid detail but at the same time maintaining a flow of the image, majesty and importance of Queen Margherita to Bordighera and to the wider Italian nation. I was aware of the Queen of course, from being in and around Bordighera for so long, but this book helps bring her to life for me. I congratulate Gisella sincerely for a job well done. I find myself telling those interested that Gisella, besides the gift for research and writing, has the additional quality of dedication and concentration. I know when she is engaged in an importance oeuvre because she is able successfully to shut out anything that disturbs her from the task. In this way she puts the best foot forward, undertakes the task and then finishes it. This is the way by which she has been able to write so many important papers and books each in a short space of time. Her legacy is assured.
I say “colleague” because we have worked together on several writing projects with Clarence Bicknell of Bordighera as a common theme and, as a great supporter of Clarence’s heritage she is a Companion of the Clarence Bicknell Association. One our web site https://clarencebicknell.com/documents/ there are eight research papers which she has been keen for us to publish. Even so, there are many details in Gisella’s book on Queen Margherita which are new to me; I aim to look more closely at topics like Clarence’s charitable works with which the Queen was closely involved, such as the Società del Bene Pubblico of which Clarence was a member alongside Berry, Benigni, Giovanelli and Bulgheroni. Even after Valerie Lester’s biography of Clarence Bicknell – MARVELS – Gisella manages to find new facts about his life and times.
Gisella Merello has published several studies on the western part of the Ligurian Riviera, including “The Tourist Image of Bordighera through Postcards and Literature” (1995), “The Future Vittorio Emanuele III as a Child visiting the Hanbury Gardens” (2022), and “The British Royal Family in Bordighera” (2019). She is coauthor of the volumes “Charles Garnier and the Riviera” and of the bilingual collective work in French and English “Les Riviera de Charles Garnier et de Gustave Eiffel” (Bernier Prize 2007 by the Académie des Beaux Art sas the year’s Best Fine Art Book). She contributed to the French and English language volume “Monacopolis”, dedicated to the urban development of Monte Carlo. She collaborated on the exhibition and catalogue “Claude Monet. The Return to the Riviera”. In 2021, she curated both the book and the exhibition “Tennis in Bordighera from 1878 to the Present”.
Book review by Marcus Bicknell, 15 June 2026