Born in Genoa, Claudia Pastorino is a popular Italian singer who has released five CDs, and teaches vocal techniques. She is well known as an animal rights activist, and has written several books about her experiences with Jainism. She is vegan.

Fabrizio Cristiano De André (18 February 1940 - 11 January 1999) was an Italian singer-songwriter. Known for his sympathies towards anarchism, libertarism and pacifism, his songs often featured marginalized and rebellious people, gypsies, prostitutes and knaves, and attacked the Catholic Church hierarchy hypocrisies.. Artistically active for almost 40 years and the author of thirty studio albums, he is renowned for the quality of his lyrics and often considered a poet. He contributed to the valorization of the languages of Italy, most notably Ligurian and, to a lesser extent, Sardinian, Gallurese and Neapolitan. Following his early death several streets, places, parks, schools and public libraries were named after him.

De André was born in Genoa, welcomed into the world by Gino Marinuzzi's "Country Waltz" on the home gramophone. Twenty-five years later, Fabrizio De André would set his "Waltz for a Love" to Marinuzzi's waltz tune.

When war broke out, the De Andre' family had to seek refuge on a country farm near Revignano (a little town near Asti), in Piemonte. Fabrizio's father, who was an Anti-fascista pursued by the police, joined the partisans. In 1945 the De André family moved back to Genova. Fabrizio went to primary school, first at the Marcellian Sisters' School and, later, at the Cesare Battisti public school. He went on to the Liceo Classico "Cristoforo Colombo"; after his final examination, he enrolled in the Law School at the University of Genoa, though he did not graduate (he gave up when he had only a few exams left). De Andre' first played the violin, then the guitar, and joined a number of local jazz bands (jazz was his "first love").