Charlemagne

Charles, called Charlemagne (742–814), was king of the Franks from 768, king of the Lombards from 774 and, on Christmas night of the year 800, the first Emperor of the Romans in the West since the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476. Crowned by Pope Leo III in the old basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, his figure marks the birth of a new Western empire and, symbolically, of the very idea of Europe.

Son of Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, Charles enlarged the Frankish kingdom through a long series of military campaigns, until it embraced much of western Europe: the conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774, the wars against the Saxons and the Avars, the Spanish expedition. His government promoted a deep administrative reform — counties, marches and missi dominici — and that flowering of learning known as the Carolingian Renaissance, animated by scholars such as Alcuin of York.

At his death in Aachen in January 814 he was succeeded by his son Louis the Pious. After him, the Treaty of Verdun of 843 divided the empire among the three grandsons: Lothair, Louis the German and Charles the Bald. It is precisely through Charles the Bald and his descent that the Carolingian imperial line interweaves, generation after generation, with the great houses of Europe.

The descent of the House of Guerri dall'Oro Gallone goes back to Charlemagne through a documented line by way of the direct Carolingians — Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald — then through the counts of Blois and Burgundy, the dukes of Aquitaine, the marquises del Carretto of Savona and Finale, the Doria princes of Melfi, the Carignani and the della Posta, down to the present day. Thirty-five generations separate Charlemagne from Simon Guerri dall'Oro Gallone.