Rapallo ( , , ) is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Genoa, in the region of Liguria in Italy. As of 2025, with a population 29,513, it is the 2nd-largest municipality in the metropolitan city.

Foreign population

As of 2024, the foreign-born population is 4,961, equal to 16.8% of the population. The 5 largest foreign nationalities are Albanians (1,063), Romanians (436), Ecuadorians (350), Egyptians (301) and Ukrainians (225).

{| class="wikitable floatright"

|+Foreign population by country of birth (2024)

  • The Castello di Punta Pagana is a seat of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. It was finished on 28 July 1631.

Events

On the first three days of July, each year Rapallo celebrates the apparition of Our Lady of Montallegro, said to have taken place on 2 July 1557, with fireworks.

Transport

Rapallo railway station, opened in 1868, forms part of the Pisa–La Spezia–Genoa railway.

Literature

thumb|[[Göran Schildt|Göran Schildt's ketch Daphne arriving in Rapallo in 1948]]

Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale wrote a poem entitled "Caffe a Rapallo", published in his early collection Ossi di Seppia (Cuttlefish Bones).

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Rapallo between December 1882 and February 1883.

The author, caricaturist and parodist Max Beerbohm lived in Rapallo from 1910 until his death in 1956, returning to Britain during World War I and World War II.

The American war poet John Allan Wyeth lived in Rapallo during the 1920s and early '30s.

The theatre designer and artist Gordon Craig lived in Villa Raggio, next door to Beerbohm, from 1917 to 1928.

Rapallo is the setting for most of Elmore Leonard's crime novel Pronto.

The American poet Robert Lowell published the poem "Sailing Home From Rapallo" in his influential 1959 book Life Studies. The poem is about Lowell's journey from Rapallo back to the United States by ship with the body of his deceased mother who died in Rapallo on vacation in 1954.

Notable people

  • The polymath Fortunio Liceti was born in Rapallo in 1577.
  • Cornelia Wicker Armsby, an American golfer and socialite, died at Rapallo in 1969.
  • Max Beerbohm, the caricaturist and essayist, lived in Rapallo from 1910 until his death in 1956, with the exception of the two World Wars.
  • Domingo Ghirardelli, founder of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was born in Rapallo in 1817 and also died there while visiting in 1894.
  • Sir Edmund Grimani Hornby, former Chief Judge of the British Supreme Consular Court at Constantinople and British Supreme Court for China and Japan died in Rapallo in 1896 and was buried there.
  • The poet Ezra Pound lived in Rapallo between the years 1924 and 1945, and part-time from 1959 to 1972, and wrote much of his Cantos there. His father, Homer Pound, is buried in the non-Catholic section of Cimitero Urbano on Via Cerisola.
  • Sir Charles Hercules Read, British archaeologist and curator, died in Rapallo in 1929 and is buried in the non-Catholic section of Cimitero Urbano.
  • The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius stayed with his family in Rapallo in 1901, where he conceived ideas for his Symphony No. 2.
  • Alexandra Zazzi, Swedish-Italian chef and television personality, was born in 1966 and grew up in Rapallo.
  • The artists Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter had an extended stay in Rapallo in 1905, where Münter produced some twenty paintings.
  • The American actress Dorothy Gish stayed at a clinic in Rapallo for two years and died there in 1968.
  • The rapper Sayf (born 1999) was raised in Rapallo.

Honorary citizens

Among the recipients of the honorary citizenship of Rapallo are:

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! Date

! Name

! Notes

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||1992||Andrew Bertie || 78th Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller 1988–2008

|-

||18 September 2008||Matthew Festing || 79th Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller 2008–2017

|}

Twin towns – sister cities

Rapallo is twinned with:

  • Iquique, Chile

References

  • Parco Naturale Regionale di Portofino
  • Information about Rapallo