Lavagna is a fishing port city of c. 13,000 inhabitants in the curving stretch of the Italian Riviera di Levante called the gulf of Tigullio, in the province of Genoa in Liguria. The borgo of Lavagna was an important Ligurian cultural center in the Middle Ages. Today its long straight beach is packed with August tourists.

Lavagna developed in Roman times as Lavania. According to some historians, it was seat of a countship since Carolingian times. From 1198 it was a fief of the Fieschi family, who used Lavagna as their stronghold in the numerous inner struggles of the Republic of Genoa.

In 1564 it was sacked by the African pirate Dragut. From 1815 it was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, and, later, of the Kingdom of Italy.

The city recreates neo-medieval festivities annually as the "Torta dei Fieschi", which has been recreating (since 1949) the festivities that surrounded the wedding in 1230 of Opizzo Fieschi, Conte di Lavagna, older brother of Sinibaldo, future Pope Innocent IV, with the Sienese patrician Bianca de' Bianchi. A colorful cortege through the streets reunites the inhabitants of the six medieval quarters (sestieri) of Lavagna, as the gigantic cake is distributed among those in the crowd who have found the matching half of their tickets.

Roberto Lavagna (born March 24, 1942) is an Argentine economist and politician, and was the former Minister of Economy and Production of Argentina from April 27, 2002, to November 28, 2005.

Lavagna was born in the Saavedra section of Buenos Aires in 1942. His father, the owner of a linotype printing shop, relocated the family to the western suburb of Morón a few years later, and Lavagna enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, where he graduated with a degree in political economy, in 1967.

He then obtained a scholarship to study in Belgium, where he earned a graduate degree in econometrics and economic policy. At the university, he met Claudine Marechal, a student from Belgium whom he married in 1970, and with whom he had three children. Lavagna also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Concepción del Uruguay.

Following the election of Peronist candidate Héctor Cámpora in 1973, Lavagna was named National Director of Price Policy in the Commerce Secretariat, and was shortly afterwards named Director of Incomes Policy by the Economy Minister, José Ber Gelbard; as such he helped oversee a key policy initiative of Gelbard's "Social Pact," which sought to involve management in efforts to control inflation while raising stagnant median wages. Gelbard's resignation in November 1974 led to Lavagna's entry into the private sector following a stint at the Ministry of Public Works, becoming a member of the board of directors of La Cantábrica, a since closed Morón steelmaker, until 1976. He also co-founded Ecolatina, a think tank, in 1975, and was a member of the board of the Institute for Applied Economics and Society (IdEAS), from 1980 to 1990.