- Genoa’s built environment echoes the city’s chaotic social history: it is eclectic, multilayered, and difficult – full of character, devoid of unity, it is seemingly unplanned, anti-grid, and democratic. Democratic – in the 16th century meaning of the word when voting was limited to nobility – but nobility in a dynamic, urban, and commercial rather than landed sense – and therefore thoroughly patrician. This would also be a good point to recall mercantile Genoa’s transactional character and its singular, cohesive, and multivalent social history.
- Its medieval town is indeed Europe’s largest and most densely built up. Its impenetrable maze of caruggi – narrow pedestrianized lanes, unadorned, raw, authentic – are lived-in, lined by disproportionately tall buildings, and quite seedy. They spill onto open spaces that seem to pop up randomly in least expected locations, adding a much needed dimension. Patience will be rewarded once you crawl out of the labyrinth onto a major square or a major street, as imposing facades, intricately sculpted portals, and transient views into a palatial courtyards fill the frame of the viewfinder.
- Its larger alleyways are lined with small family owned shops, many historic. Buying or eating local is still very accessible in Italy, and ridiculously easy in this town. As you pass by these pastry shops, butcher shops, clothing shops, pharmacies, and antique bookstores, pay attention – a number of them are of serious vintage, their signage emblazoned in original gold leaf lettering and painted fonts, their counters, shelving, workshops, and toolsets deliberately preserved and in active duty today. Some of the botteghe storiche date as far back as the early 1600’s – like Antica Farmacia Sant’Anna specializing in herbs and located outside the old town on the serpentine road above picturesque Casteletto, it was founded and is still run by the friars of the Barefoot Carmelite Order. Many have been at their location since the 1700’s and the 1800’s, others are turn of the 20th century – like the 1906 homeopathic Farmacia Alvigini on the edge of old town by Porta Soprana between Piazza Ferrari and Piazza Dante. One of the more interesting is Argenteria Gismondi, a shop by local master silversmiths, in the family for seven generations since it opened in 1763 but in its current location above Mercato Orientale and Piazza Colombo also outside old town and preserved since 1880.
- For a quick espresso or drink at the curved walnut bar counter, check out Pasticceria Gelateria Mangini across from Palazzo Doria Spinola on via Roma not far from the busy Piazza Corvetto – or Liquoreria Pasticceria Marescotti Cavo. Not a huge fan of local candied fruit but some pastry shops are worth a quick look – the Profumo Pasticceria at the end of via Garibaldi, the 1828 Fratelli Klainguti or the nearby 1780 Confeteria Pietro Romanengo fu Stefano in Piazza Soziglia (vaguely reminiscent of the slightly older Patisserie Stohrer opened by the pastry chef of Polish King Stanislas Leszczynski on rue Montorgueil in Paris when his daughter was married to Louis XV).
- This city of dusty forgotten alleys hosts Europe’s first urban renewal project, which entailed demolition of low class residences and a brothel to produce via Garibaldi, fka via Aurea or Golden Street – at 250m long x 7.5m wide, the continent’s first monumental street and ostensibly its most noble when it opened in 1550. Most palazzi on Strada Nuova continued to be built in the 1600s, at the same time as on the newer via Balbi. The fact that in this city the symmetry of Rome or Turin is impossible adds significant relative value.
- Rubens, 17th century’s most accomplished artist, was so impressed with the street he produced his famous Genoa Palaces sketches and had his residence in Antwerp – at that time the world’s wealthiest metropolis, with a status similar to that of Manhattan today – built in the Genoese style. Charles Dickens had a similar impression with Strada Nuova over two centuries later. The same attributes that earned Genoa a place on the Grand Tour put it on the UNESCO World Heritage list two hundred years later.
- Appropriately, a modern design concept store known as via Garibaldi, 12 – a self-proclaimed lifestyle store – functions in the 16th century Palazzo Campanella, its clean and minimalist presence perfectly balanced against the huge floor to ceiling arch windows, the interior colonnade, vaulted ceilings and renaissance frescos.
- Genoa hides Italy’s most unusual lineup of extravagant palazzi of urban aristocracy – in historical and artistic value, they are on par with Italy’s main art cities, even if in refinement or ostentatious display they fall short of top tier palaces of Florence, Venice or Rome. It is part of Genoa’s unique patrician residential system and owes its existence to the City Republic’s rare decentralized governance structure.
- Ruled initially by a Doge then increasingly by an oligarchy of several influential merchant families, the city adopted a famous decree in the 1570s that compelled individual patrician clans, via a published lists known as Rolli, to open their city residences for official state visits and diplomatic functions on a rotating basis in an order dictated by the noble rank of the visiting guest. Several such lists have been preserved; the largest included 150 palazzi; a total of 162 palazzi have been included in at least one of them. ‘Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli’ became a separate UNESCO World Heritage entry in 2006. Since then, Genoa has been celebrating its Rolli Days, an open house of its Renaissance and Baroque palatial residences: for a weekend in early April 2017, by opening the doors of 37 of its Palazzi del Rolli and their gardens, and again in mid-October of that year, adding a week long festival in May in more recent years. The number of residences open for visit varies from year to year, and some open their doors for the first time.
- To be clear, the word palazzi throughout Italy is used to denote a ‘townhouse’ – in many cases of palatial proportions and artistic value – rather than a royal palace; don’t expect the scale or grandeur of St Petersburg, Vienna or Versailles, and think closer to Florence and Venice than Rome’s Quirinale.
- But please appreciate the diseconomies of scale – their owners mere local patricians, prominent urban dwellers, distinguished by their service to the City Republic; they did not rule Empires or nation states and did not own much land, they just took part in the governance and commerce of this important city. Genoa’s public life was less centralized and more fragmented among competing patrician families, which further reduced the length of the relatively limited shadow each of them could project. The vintage is also different, most of Genoa’s residences either predate modern royal palaces built in the post Peace of Westphalia nation states N of the Alps or are contemporaries of the earliest ones. Viewed with this handicap, the quantity of the palazzi and the quality of artistic achievement are both remarkable.
- Much deserved recognition came 15 years ago, finally putting Genoa on the map. An elite group of its top 46 renaissance palazzi from its aristocratic golden age of the 15th and 16th centuries – some patrician families owned more than one, and members of the Grimaldi family, rulers of Monaco, occupied half a dozen palatial properties in Genoa – eventually found their way onto UNESCO World Heritage list. Better late than never.
- Entire stretches of a continuous arc formed by via Balbi, via Cairoli, and via Garibaldi (fka Strade Nuove) – along with via Lomellini, along Vico Dritto, and the city’s old mercantile area of Mercato di Banchi – are lined with palatial patrician residences, whose detailed exteriors and fresco covered interiors compete with decent collections of Spanish and Flemish art of the day that are not short on top names. The arcaded courtyards of the winged palazzi, surrounded by porticoed galleries and featuring cross vaulting supported by free-standing pillars, are equally inspiring. Most residences have spectacular open staircases and perfectly proportioned loggias overlooking delicate gardens. These ancillary open spaces behind Genoa’s aristocratic residences are holding their own in a fight for visitor’s attention, and are often more mesmerizing than the facades.
- On via Garibaldi, Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo Rosso (Brignole), and Palazzo Doria Tursi (the oldest and most imposing), are combined into a single Strada Nuova museum; Tursi is now the seat of the municipality. 11 other palazzi are right next to these three on via Garibaldi, among them impressive Palazzi Tobia Pallavicino, Nicolosio Lomellino. Carrega-Cataldi, and Palazzo Grimaldi della Meridiana are at the end of via Garibaldi.
- On via Balbi, of note are the beautiful Palazzo dell’Ateneo (houses the University, founded in early 1400s, the complex spans old aristocratic palaces, art collections, historical archives), Palazzo Balbi-Cattaneo Adorno (the first on via Balbi), and Palazzo Francesco Maria Balbi Piovera.
- However the most jaw dropping in its proportion, setting, and detail among the palazzi along via Balbi – if not in all of Genoa – is the elegant Palazzo Reale. It is complete with a gallery of mirrors, a cutting edge library, imposing wings embracing the courtyard, and an open belvedere overlooking a beautiful hanging garden mosaic with a fountain that opens to the Mediterranean sea. The palace was later sold to King of Savoy who used it as official residence (must explain the Reale in the name). Its other name is palazzo Balbi, owed by the old patrician family of Genova senators, international businessmen and art collectors who for a period of time in the 1600s lived in Antwerp and were close to Van Dyck. The Balbi family gets credit for inviting the great Flemish artist to Genoa where he set up his studio. The Balbi clan also contributed the monumental Palazzo Balbi-Senarega with impressive double height colonnades supporting perimeter galleries and Palazzo Durazzo Pallavicini known for its rich picture gallery and located in close proximity on the cozy and elegant piazza della Nunziata at the junction of via Balbi and Largo della Zucca, which becomes via Garibaldi further East. This family also sponsored the construction of the Balbi street itself, built the Jesuit College, which became the university, and owned a villa in Sestri Levanti east of Genoa on the way from Rapallo to Cinqueterre.
- Old town from via Garibaldi to piazza Ferrara. Four short blocks off via Garibaldi is Palazzo Spinola, now housing the national gallery; a little further into the old town and closer to piazza Ferrara, Palazzo San Giorgio, built in the 13th century for the captain of the popolo but converted into the seat of the world’s oldest public bank; Palazzo Gio Vicenzo Imperiale; Palazzo Lamba, and Palazzo Andrea Doria with its impressive private art collection and garden located in piazza San Matteo.
- In a category of its own is Palazzo Ducale, a massive U-shaped 60,000 SF complex with San Lorenzo gallery overlooking piazza de Ferrari and piazza Matteotti, construction lasted from the 13th century to the 19th when transformation from a former fortress to a mannerist palace was completed producing its present day monumental French neoclassical façade.
- However, another two to three hundred noble palazzi in hidden in quirky alleys of central Genoa are yet to be catalogued and remain in relative obscurity, unknown to most except for a rare, narrowly focused expert. These monuments are still awaiting a cohesive study but are nevertheless ready to be discovered and interrogated by an inquisitive traveler.
- While Genoa’s presentation is not user friendly and not for a passive tourist, this cavernous and chaotic place is naturally panoramic, picturesque, monumental, and multilayered. It is rich in surprises, contrasts, and intense detail, and can be rewarding for a traveler who decides to spend a day. The city’s muscular, cube shaped historic buildings, with ornate doorways and angular mansard roofs, are surprisingly photogenic – even when not posing – especially when viewed from the hillside serpentine streets above.
- Genoa boasts the greatest spatial complexity and nuance of any continuously developed space in Italy, if not all of Europe. The city’s topology adds a rare vertical dimension, integrating its built environment into the dramatic landscape.
- A succession of spaces formed by loggias, interior courtyards, atriums, belvederes, gardens, and mansards is on display and comes to light. The interplay of elevations and topology provides multiplicity of viewpoints, multi-directionality of perspectives, enhancing the visual effect. Adding an element of anticipation and surprise.
- A multitude of irregular shapes and features are forced to coexist in greater proximity, folded into an amphitheater shape between the sea and the mountains as if for better observation, putting everything – from streets lined with elegant buildings, separated by gardens and smaller parks, down to every dome and dormer window – on display for viewing. Deep contrasts between the Ligurian light and shadow light up the stucco and stonework detailing on the city’s facades; the effect adds an almost tactile sensation to the remote sightseeing.
- Many of the viewing points were enabled by the hillside development brought by the 19th century technology advances that, among other innovations, brought the elegant block of middle class dwellings. City block size, French Riviera style apartment buildings rise along the serpentine streets lining the mountain slopes high above the narrow lanes of the medieval center and the port. The vertical drop from many of the viewing points allows several tiers of building elevations to be placed on view in the same frame. Ascensore Castelletto system, the 20th century hybrid funicular and public elevator service, offers multiple access points to the panoramic views.
- The most breathtaking view is from Spianata di Casteletto (Belvedere Montaldo), a hilltop park offering a Lisbonesque panorama of the sea and the docks, and a 360-degree view of the city; it is reached by a well preserved lift built in 1906 from piazza Portello located next to Strada Nuova right behind the municipality. The ideal elevation of this esplanade almost 60m above the street level below and sufficiently above the top of the palatial rooftops has a sculptural effect that keeps the viewer close to Genoa’s elaborate and spatially nuanced skyline.
- For an eye level close-up of skyline features of turn of the century secular Genoa book a top floor room in the Bristol Palace hotel overlooking the city’s main arcaded artery – an unexpected geometric perspective in both directions, made up of mansard roofs punctuated by ornate pedimented dormers. The hotel is just two blocks from Piazza de Ferrari; this Belle Epoque façade on via XX Settembre, flanked by symmetrical multistory bays of oriel windows, is hard to miss. People come back recommending newly opened and recently updated minimalist boutique hotels of design and comfort variety – Palazzo Grillo in a nearly ruined but rescued 16th century building or Melia in Carignano – but I would stick to Bristol Palace for a taste of big city;it is just outside the dense, claustrophobic and dimensionless old town. One other contender would be Palazzo Cicala in San Lorenzo, a rococo jewel with restored period rooms, vaulted ceilings and postmedieval detail.
- For a more pedestrian view of architecture and sidewalk floor mosaics of Genoa’s most vibrant and elegant commercial street, walk up to the top of the marble clad arch of Ponte Monumentale, which spans via XX Settembre a few blocks further East. This rare viewing elevation of 20 meters offers penultimate floor level views down the middle of a street – Highline Park style, only higher.
- Genoa is an eclectic agglomeration of contrasts, demographic, social, spatial, visual –
- Europe’s most densely populated medieval quarter is ethnically diverse and, besides one of the most impressive collections of palazzi built by the powerful aristocratic families at the height of the city’s financial and seafaring power, has a large population of prostitutes. The squalor of the red light district is just a short side alley away from the patrician splendor of Strada Nuova, and while most of its old town, Europe’s largest, is authentic, the thickly built up Centro Storico is anything but polished or presentable, and visibly poor.
- The unstoppable buzz of Genoa is best appreciated around the office area along the far side of piazza Ferrari and the inner section of via XX Settembre – a clear and welcoming announcement that the idyllic landscapes of Piemonte and the mountains have been left behind, and a welcome first impression on which to build probing excursions into the medieval inner city.
- Italy’s most impressive lineup of 26 grand residential buildings is just across the happening piazza de Ferrari – their modernist, bourgeois ‘liberty style’ from late 19th-early 20th century celebrating the post-unification industrial age along via XX Settembre. As many as 400 old buildings were demolished to make way for this elegant street which artfully masks Genoa’s first experiments with now ubiquitous things like reinforced concrete and central heating. The city’s main street, called via Venti by the locals, spanning almost a kilometer past the closure created by Ponte Monumentale – flashbacks of Stockholm’s Kungsgatan arch bridge, only less claustrophobic and significantly more ornate – continuing to the late 19th century Mercato Orientale and beyond. The elegant avenue ends at via Cadorna, which separates the arcaded piazza della Vittoria, Genoa’s largest architectural project of the fascist era, from Brignole, they city’s 2nd largest of its three major train stations.
- Remember to pinch yourself – before you get carried away to Budapest, Madrid, Buenos Aires – this is still Genoa. One would need to leave Italy – and physically travel to one of these places – to see a wall of facades of such monumental uniformity, such cohesive detail as on via XX Settembre. Even Rome, famously short on 19th century large scale urban content and already fully defined during prior centuries, falls short in this comparison, and so does Milan. And you can still see local children playing soccer right in the side streets off monumental via XX Settembre. Here the linear continuity of the covered sidewalks, undisputed along the length of the section of via Venti closest to Piazza de Ferrari, is ensured by short arches spanning cross-streets on each side of some of the freestanding, block wide facades lining the street.
- The sidewalks of via XX Settembre are lined by exquisite arcaded porticos; less extensive than Torino’s and certainly than Bologna’s, they are not nearly as famous and barely mentioned anywhere despite all their beauty – another reminder of this city’s obscurity. Of those who know, few would disagree that no covered sidewalks, in Italy or outside the country, are more grandiose or more decorative than in Genoa – at 5m height and enriched with paneled ceilings and polychromatic mosaic floors, their monumental scale and attention to detail are truly unrivaled. Perhaps one reason this noble avenue seems miles away from the cramped lanes of the old town just across piazza de Ferrari.
- Cramped medieval core coexists with elegant apartment blocks, high end villas and hilltop sanctuaries just outside the center. Closer to the center, spectacular Villa Pallavicino delle Peschiere with its commanding viewing terraces and Villa Lo Zerbino with its elongated pool and well landscaped garden of Parco Groppallo with rows of evergreen trees offers a great panoramic view of the city and the sea – built as suburban garden villas in the 16th century they have been engulfed by the upward expansion of the city. Further out, along the coast in both directions are several historic garden villas – on the Western edge of the city is the impressive Villa Duchessa di Galliera with an Italian garden and a large park, built in late 1600s, on the Eastern edge and past picturesque seaside Boccadasse, are Villa Carrara and a bit further Villa Quartara, each with a large park of its own.
- Piazza de Ferrari itself is a pulsating center of civic life of Genoa, the city’s main and most photogenic square where old meets new in a highly contrasting setting. It combines a number of impressive public buildings surrounding a massive fascist era fountain – Teatro Carlo Felice, Galleria Mazzini passage arcades behind it (this is Genoa’s largest project of the 19th century, the length of its glass vaulted roof is equivalent to as many as eight medieval blocks), the Academy of Fine Arts, Palazzo Ducale, Liguria regional administration office, a number of corporate headquarters.
- The pinnacle of building design on this square is the neo-baroque Palazzo della Nuova Borsa (Stock Exchange) built on a spectacular circular plot that joins via Dante and via XX Settembre, celebrating Genoa’s place as the second financial capital of Italy after Milan after reunification and before WWI – the skyline features of this ornate complex include two beautiful corner domes of the Stock Exchange building echoed by two larger ones rising across the street in either side above the rounded corners formed by piazza de Ferrari with via Dante and via XX Settembre.
- Another place nearby where the old and the new coexist is Porta Soprana, one of two monumental towers surviving from Genoa’s extensive fortifications built and expanded from 9th to 17th centuries, the contrast b/t pedestrian zone of dark caruggi in the old town on the one hand and the Piacentini tower on piazza Dante, Italy’s tallest building, could not be greater.
- A place where Genoa’s big city vibe, untouched by fascist architecture, is felt more than anywhere else in the historical center is the nearby monumental piazza Corvetto and its surrounding public areas. It is anchored by Palazzo Doria Spinola and sandwiched between the two parks on opposite sides, and connects via Roma to the long, straight and upward sloping perspective of via Assarotti, which started the city’s bourgeois expansion uphill in the mid-19th century, and remains lined with city block sized typical old residential buildings characteristic of large Italian cities.
- Foreign influences coexist with purely Genoese styles and their Spanish prototypes, creating a unique – and uncharacteristically cosmopolitan and connected for an Italian City Republic – spirit of place.
- Alternating bands of black and white marble – prominent in the skylines of Siena, Pistoia, Lucca or Pisa – \dominate in Genoa’s original 13th to 15th century gothic structures – Cathedral of San Lorenzo, and churches of San Matteo, Doria’s family church, Sant’Agostino, and Santo Stefano, Palazzi Lamba and Andrea Doria in piazza San Matteo and Palazzo Spinola del Marmi – as well as in the 17th century Mannerist revival of Palazzo Fieschi Ravaschieri on piazza San Lorenzo. Italy’s tallest building on piazza Dante when built under fascists in 1930s also uses the alternating band motif.
- Lombard influences are visible in the churches of San Giorgio and San Tropete, and Santissimo Nome di Maria e degli Angeli Custodi, and the impressive Romanesque and late Renaissance basilica Santa Maria delle Vigne
- There is no shortage of Roman influences in the baroque and counterreformation period churches of Santi Amrogio e Andrea Il Gesu on piazza Metteotti and piazza de Ferrari, Santa Maria Maddalena, San Siro, San Luca, San Filippo Neri, San Carlo, Santa Croce e San Camillo, and Santa Maria Assunta in Carignano just outside the medieval core
- Spanish prototypes are everywhere thanks to close links of Genoa and Spain – in the enormous Albergo dei Poveri above the central city that follows Madrid’s Escorial and in the church of San Pietro in Banchi.
- Alternating bands of black and white marble – prominent in the skylines of Siena, Pistoia, Lucca or Pisa – \dominate in Genoa’s original 13th to 15th century gothic structures – Cathedral of San Lorenzo, and churches of San Matteo, Doria’s family church, Sant’Agostino, and Santo Stefano, Palazzi Lamba and Andrea Doria in piazza San Matteo and Palazzo Spinola del Marmi – as well as in the 17th century Mannerist revival of Palazzo Fieschi Ravaschieri on piazza San Lorenzo. Italy’s tallest building on piazza Dante when built under fascists in 1930s also uses the alternating band motif.
