Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
contents of his stall so fresh it smells of the sea. It's exotic, and best of all, this
“secret, inward-looking casbah city” (as Renzo Piano, Genoa's celebrated architect,
fondly describes it) is relatively undiscovered. All around you are the lilting
sounds of Italian, with barely another tourist in sight. Given that its urban regen-
eration dates back a mere decade, it's simply a matter of time before this “Venice
without water” joins the list of must-see destinations in Italy.
Beyond the labyrinthine
centro storico,
which abuts the Porto Antico (home to
the largest aquarium in Europe), Genoa is not a conventionally attractive city. It
has a large industrial sector leading to massive urban degeneration, and many of
its hillsides are blighted by ugly apartment blocks dating from the 1960s. To get
the most out of your stay (and, yes, Genoa definitely warrants a few nights), base
yourself in the
centro storico
and confine yourself to exploring the many attrac-
tions that lie within this charming medieval village—a virtual island within a city
that sprawls 34km (21 miles) along the coast.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GENOA
Genoa has always been a mercantile city. By
A
.
D
. 1000, Genoa was already mint-
ing its own money. Its power lay in its ability to dominate the Mediterranean,
with superior boat-building skills and a ready army of mariners. The end of the
medieval period saw a gradual waning in Genoa's maritime dominance, but the
ruling oligarchy, made up of a few powerful families—headed in the mid-16th
century by Admiral Andrea Doria, a naval genius—had by now diversified into
banking and financing, and thrived on exploiting the political intrigues of the
times. By loaning money to the various monarchs embroiled in imperialist wars,
and charging a whopping 10% to 40% interest for the favor, Genoa, already
impossibly wealthy, became the most glamorous city in Europe, so much so that
the period between 1550 and 1650 became known as the “century of the
Genoese,” and the city as La Superb (The Proud).
But fortunes declined as emerging nations aggressively moved into the shrink-
ing Mediterranean trade arena (sapped, ironically enough, by the discovery of
Atlantic trade routes by Columbus,
now one of Genoa's most famous sons,
but forced at the time to turn to Spain
to fund his ambitious journey). By the
beginning of the 19th century, Genoa
found itself stagnating economically,
but politically it remained a hotbed of
plot and intrigue. Stirred by the
speeches of Giuseppe Mazzini (born
here in 1805), the fiercely determined
Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Genoa
to Sicily with his “thousand Red Shirts” in 1860, and so set in motion the force
that would flatten all resistance to the unification of Italy.
The 1900s saw the maritime city turn into a major industrial center, much of
it state-controlled, and huge urban construction projects that led to the visual
decay of the city. Many middle-class Genoese fled to the outlying green hills. It
was only in 1992, when the 5th centenary of the voyage of Christopher
Columbus appeared on the events calendar, that the city fathers awoke from their
“
Gold is born in the Americas, dies
”
in Seville, and is buried in Genoa.
—A popular 16th-century
saying, referring to the
power of the Genoese
bankers of the time
