The bombings of the Second World War canceled over 90% of the city. But from those rubble was born an unparalleled passion, which has become a winning recipe. How did a small Ligurian municipality become a world reference of sport? Story of wasps, caimans, cement, bouquets of flowers, historical stairways and …
“The target was clearly identified in the brilliant moonlight and with the help of the Bengal”. In Recco the first bombs fell on November 10, 1943: the goal was the railway bridge that connected Genoa and the central-southern Italy, a crossroads of civil transport but above all military in those years of war and resistance. After each attack, the Germans reconstructed him and the allies followed to damage it. It was completely destroyed on 11 July 1944, yet the missiles continued to rain until August 28, 27 incursions in ten months that killed 127 people (almost all during the first bombing, because then the citizens repaired in the countryside) and razed over 90 percent of the city to the ground. Recco was called “La Cassino del Nord” and in 1993 he received the gold medal for civil merit. Indeed, at the end of the war, a child named Cesarino fell into a chasm caused by the bombs: it is remembered as a posthumous victim of the conflict. Nothing remained nothing left. A detail: that November 10, 1943, warm as certain autumn evenings on the sea, many inhabitants were surprised by the bombings while they were in the cinema to see “The Red Primula”, a title similar to another film which, more than 45 years later, would have told the city sport par excellence. Water polo.