The staircase connecting the Belvedere Edoardo Firpo and piazzale Enrico Bassano in Boccadasse, the famous village in the center of Genoa, will be called Piero Calamai. This was decided by the City Council, 65 years after the shipwreck of the flagship of the Italian Navigation Company, which on 25 July 1956 saw the ship fatally wounded by the Swedish liner Stockholm and, the following morning, sink. Not before, thanks to the decisions of its captain, Calamai, that the greatest rescue in the history of navigation was carried out: all the passengers, except those perished in the collision, were saved by the Italian crew (there were 1720 people on board, 46 the victims on Italian unity).
A decision that welcomes a desire that the Calamai family, its sisters, granddaughters had expressed several years ago now. The family members had launched a real appeal, so that the name of the commander did not sink into oblivion, that same oblivion that had also enveloped the Andrea Doria case, until – on the 50th anniversary of the shipwreck – the truth of the government investigation, which gave the Stockholm wrong, kept buried for half a century. Now, even that shy man, very Ligurian in his manner, an excellent sailor, who paid for that lack of clarity on the accident and that desire not to reopen the history file with his personal oblivion, has obtained from his city the memory he deserved. .
Not that it has been forgotten by everyone. Books, newspaper articles, even docufilms. Luca Guardabascio, the director of “Andrea Doria: Are all the passengers safe?”, Produced by Pierette Domenica Simpson, a survivor of the shipwreck, originally from Piedmont, was awarded with the “Best director” recently at the Asti International Film Festival. settled in Michigan, in Detroit.