Fieschi

The Fieschi were an ancient noble house of the Genoese hinterland, made counts of Lavagna by the Emperor Henry II in 1010, holding a semi-independent lordship against Genoa. Leading Guelphs and merchants, they held fiefs and interests in Piedmont, Lombardy and Naples, and their feud with the Doria shaped Genoese politics for centuries.

The family's church summit came when Sinibaldo Fieschi was elected Pope Innocent IV in 1243; he fled Frederick II to France in 1244, returned to Rome only in 1250 and died in 1254. His nephew Ottobuono became Pope Adrian V in 1276, one of three popes that year, and the house is reckoned to have supplied seventy-two cardinals.

Their long contest with Genoa ended in the Fieschi conspiracy of 2 January 1547, when Count Giovanni Luigi Fieschi tried to seize the dogate from Andrea Doria and drowned in the arsenal. Its failure broke their power, though a cadet line continued as the Fieschi Ravaschieri princes of Belmonte.