Luigi Lambruschini was born at Sestri Levante, then part of the independent Republic of Genoa. He joined a religious order called the Order of the Barnabites in his youth. He attended the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as secretary to Cardinal Ercole Consalvi. Lambruschini was appointed Archbishop of Genoa in 1819. He was later named as Apostolic Nuncio to the Kingdom of France in 1827 by Pope Pius VII, but was forced to flee following the 1830 revolution that toppled the Bourbon monarchy and brought House of Orleans pretender Louis-Phillippe to the French throne.