|
Genoa district guide
(Back to
Genoa main
information page)
GENOA (
Genova in Italian) is "the most winding, incoherent of cities,
the most entangled topographical ravel in the world." So said
Henry James, and the city is still marvellously eclectic, full
of pace and rough-edged style. Sprawled behind the huge port -
Italy's largest and an increasingly popular stopoff for
international cruise liners - is a dense and fascinating warren
of medieval alleyways, a district which has more zest than all
the coastal resorts put together.
Genoa made its money at sea, through trade, colonial
exploitation and piracy. By the thirteenth century, on the heels
of a major role in the Crusades , the Genoese were roaming the
Mediterranean, bringing back ideas as well as goods: the city's
architects were using Arab pointed arches a century before the
rest of Italy. The San Giorgio banking syndicate effectively
controlled the city for much of the fifteenth century, and
cold-shouldered Columbus (who had grown up in Genoa) when he
sought funding for his voyages of exploration. With Spanish
backing, he opened up new Atlantic trade routes which ironically
reduced Genova La Superba ("the proud") to a backwater.
Following foreign invasion, in 1768 the Banco di San Giorgio was
forced to sell the Genoese colony of Corsica to the French, and
a century later, the city became a hotbed of radicalism: Mazzini
, one of the main protagonists of the Risorgimento, was born
here, and in 1860 Garibaldi set sail for Sicily with his "Thousand"
from the city's harbour. Around the same time, Italy's
industrial revolution began in Genoa, with steelworks and
shipyards spreading along the coast. These suffered heavy
bombing in World War II, and the subsequent economic decline
hobbled Genoa for decades.
Things started to look up in the 1990s. State funding to
celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus's 1492 voyage paid
to renovate some of the city's late-Renaissance palaces and the
old port area, with Genoa's most famous son of modern times,
Renzo Piano (best known as the co-designer of Paris's Pompidou
Centre), taking a leading role. The city was the focus of world
attention for the G8 summit in July 2001 ( www.genoa-g8.it ), an
event which marked a L90 billion programme to prepare for a
well-earned role as European Capital of Culture in 2004.
The tidying-up hasn't sanitized the old town , however; the core
of the city, between the two stations and the waterfront, is
still dark and slightly threatening. But despite the sleaze, the
overriding impression is of a buzzing hive of activity - food
shops nestled in the portals of former palaces, carpenters'
workshops sandwiched between designer furniture outlets,
everything surrounded by a crush of people and the squashed
vowels of the impenetrable Genoese dialect that has, over the
centuries, absorbed elements of Neapolitan, Calabrese and
Portuguese. Aside from the cosmopolitan street-life, you should
seek out the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo with its fabulous
treasury, small medieval churches such as San Donato and Santa
Maria di Castello , and the Renaissance palazzi that contain
Genoa's art collections and furniture and decor from the
grandest days of the city's illustrious past.
The City
Genoa's atmospheric Old Town spreads
outwards from the port in a confusion of tiny alleyways (
caruggi ), bordered by Via Gramsci along the waterfront and by
Via Balbi and Via Garibaldi to the north. The caruggi are lined
with high buildings, usually six or seven storeys, set very
close together. Tiny grocers, textile workshops and bakeries
jostle for position with boutiques, design outlets and
goldsmiths amidst a flurry of shouts, smells and scrawny cats.
Not for nothing is Genoa the only European city to be mentioned
in the Arabian Nights .
The cramped layout of the area reflects its medieval politics.
Around the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the city's
principal families - Doria, Spinola, Grimaldi and Fieschi -
marked out certain streets and squares as their territory, even
extending their domains to include churches: to pray in someone
else's chapel was to risk being stabbed in the back. New
buildings on each family's patch had to be slotted in wherever
they could, resulting in a maze of crooked alleyways that was
the battleground of dynastic feuds which lasted well into the
eighteenth century. Genoa has, however, remained relatively free
of fire, not least because each building's kitchens were
invariably placed on the topmost storey
(Back to
Genoa main
information page) |
|
