The Sixteenth Century
Finale crumbles in times of change
The 16th century was a difficult time for the Finale Area. In 1530, Giovanni II Del Carretto was mortally wounded during the Conquest of Tunis, thereby ending his great rise onto an Italian political scene that was by then dominated by Charles V Habsburg.
As none of his offspring were of age at the time of his death, his wife Peretta Usodimare Cybo became regent, so when she married the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria in 1527, he took control over the Finale Area.
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY – 1500-1602 CE
However, when Peretta’s son Alfonso II Del Carretto came of age in 1546, the marquisate went to him and he became a complex and controversial princely figure in a quickly-changing world. The ever-growing demands relating to the up-keep of a princely court, taxation, inflation caused by the arrival of large quantities of silver and gold ore from the Americas, the assent of great international empires and national states caused living conditions to worsen and a number of riots to break out across Europe.
Of course, Finale was not spared, and in 1568, after the siege of Castel Gavone, Alfonso II was forced to flee before the riots – fuelled by Genoa – and seek refuge at the Empire’s court in Vienna, where he died in 1583 without ever returning to his fiefdom.
He was fleetingly succeeded by his brothers Alessandro and Sforza Andrea Del Carretto and the latter sold the Marquisate of Finale to the Spanish crown in 1598, before dying with no offspring in 1602.
Sforza Andrea’s majestic mausoleum inside San Biagio’s Church at Finalborgo was commissioned to artist Battista Orsolino by his heir Giovanni Andrea Doria and marked both the end of the ancient House of Del Carretto and the entrance of Finale onto the greater European scenario.
