San Remo

If you travel from the west (Genova, Arma di Taggia, Bussana) on the SS 1 entering San Remo, then you'll have the chance to admire just before the first roundabout along the left roadside a whole lot of beautiful villas. One of them belonged to Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and donator of the Nobel prize. The park situated nearby used to be part of the house, too. More about Alfred Nobel ...

Right next to Alfred Nobel's villa is the Villa Adriana. On a sign attached to the garden wall it is said that the first Ukrainian national poet, Lesya Ukrainka, lived in this place from 1901 to 1903. More about Lesya Ukrainka ...

Alfred Bernhard Nobel

was born on 10/21/1833 in Sweden, partly grew up in Saint Petersburg, apart from Swedish he spoke four foreign languages fluently and made early experiences in the USA.

In 1864 he established his nitroglycerine factory in Hamburg, because Sweden had not authorized his dangerous experiments as a consequence of an explosion that had occurred briefly before which led to five deaths, among them his younger brother Emil. In 1867 he got his most important invention, the dynamite, patented. Dynamite - and his warmongering clients - made him rich. Except for the mansion in San Remo, he also possessed a mansion in Paris, Avenue Malakoff. Apart from that, however, he used to live rather modestly.

In 1876, through a want ad in the newspaper, he took on the Viennese countess Bertha von Kinsky as a „secretary and supervisor of his household“ at the Avenue Malakoff. Unfortunately only for eight days. Then Bertha received a telegram from Vienna. „I cannot live without thee“, wrote the older brother of Bertha's students at the Suttner family.

She left and married him. As Bertha von Suttner she was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1905 for her long-standing commitment in the peace movement. Meanwhile she has reappeared again on the Austrian 2-€ coin.

When Alfred Nobel died in San Remo on 12/10/1896, he held 355 patents and owned 90 factories within 20 countries. He left part of his fortune to a „Nobel fund“ and asked the Norwegian parliament, by testament, to set up an annual prize award for those „who during the preceding year have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind“.

Lesya Ukrainka

was born on 02/25/1871 as Larisa Kosatch within a nationalist wolhynian aristocratic family. Already in the mid-1880's she published her first poems. But first only in the Austrian crown lands, Galicia and Bukovina, as the Ukrainian language had been banned by the Tsar in 1876. Later on she translated western and southern European authors into Ukrainian.

She suffered from childhood from a tuberculosis of the bone and therefore spent much time abroad seeking for remedy against the supposed rheumatism. She died in Kiev on 08/01/1913.