Taganrog and the Memory of Garibaldi's Meeting with Kuneo: How a Russian Port Changed the Fate of Italy In the history of every great person, there is a starting point, a moment that turns their life around. For Giuseppe Garibaldi, the national hero of Italy, the unifier of a fragmented country, this point was not Rome, Genoa, or South America. It was a distant Russian port city, Taganrog. It was here, in one of the port taverns, that the 26-year-old captain of a trading schooner met a man who opened his eyes to the fate of his homeland. This meeting became the turning point, after which the sailor turned into a revolutionary, and his name entered history forever. Today, Taganrog preserves the memory of this event — in stone, in street names, and in museum exhibits. Spring 1833: Oranges, the Port, and a Fateful Encounter In April 1833, a small Italian trading schooner, "Clorinda" (some sources call it "Larinda"), entered the Taganrog port. Its cargo was oranges, and the ship was commanded by a young captain, Giuseppe Garibaldi, a hereditary sailor from Nice. He was 26 years old, and he had seen the world, but his soul had not yet known his main passion — the struggle for freedom. At that time, Italy was divided into many small states, some of which were under Austrian rule. Patriots dreaming of a united and independent country had to flee abroad. Many of them settled in port cities, where they conducted agitation among sailors. One of such émigrés was Giovanni Battista Kuneo, who lived in Taganrog and actively propagated the ideas of the secret revolutionary organization "Young Italy," created by Giuseppe Mazzini, in the early 1830s. Garibaldi and Kuneo met in one of the port taverns at the intersection of Petrovskaya Street and Kommerchesky Perulok. The passionate speeches of his compatriot literally turned the soul of the young captain upside down. Kuneo told him about the goals of "Young Italy": the liberation from Austrian rule, the unification of the cou ... Read more