This family, based in the nearby village of San Salvatore di Cogorno, built a vast noble domain in the Ligurian Levant and Chiavari hinterland.

During the Middle Ages there were countless political clashes for the domination of Lavagna between the Fieschis and the Republic of Genoa which had an always faithful ally and a defensive border stronghold in the nearby Chiavari.

[4] When the village became a free municipality, around the 12th century, the Fieschi lordship continued, within the limits, to carry out the administrative and political work of Lavagna.

In the fourteenth century, with the absorption of the Fieschis into the highest Genoese nobility, a gradual downsizing of the Lavagna dominions began.

[3] Males of the Fieschi— all of them styled Conte di Lavagna— played major roles as Guelph partisans in the governance and military history of medieval Genoa, ever in conflict with the Republic and always retaining their connection with their holdings here.