Where to Stay in Genoa, Liguria

What is Genoa known for?

Genoa was a maritime republic that ran trade from the Black Sea to Gibraltar. The money came home as stone: the Palazzi dei Rolli along Via Garibaldi were private houses so grand that the state made their owners lodge visiting princes, and three of them, Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco and the Royal Palace of Genoa, are galleries. Columbus was born in the old town.

Pesto comes from these hills, focaccia from these ovens, and the Lighthouse of Genoa has marked the harbour mouth since the Middle Ages.

What are the main landmarks in Genoa?

Genoa hides its landmarks in the alleys. Genoa Cathedral wears black and white stripes and still keeps the naval shell that fell through its roof without exploding, Porta Soprana stands where the medieval wall crossed the ridge, and the House of Cristoforo Colombo leans against it. The Lighthouse of Genoa marks the port.

Renzo Piano rebuilt the Porto Antico around the Aquarium of Genoa and The Biosphere, and the Galata Museo del Mare keeps a full-size galley in its hall.

What is the history of Genoa?

Genoa was a Ligurian harbour before Rome called it Genua. The city made itself out of the sea. Its ships carried the first crusade east and came back with trading rights, and by the twelfth century the Compagna Communis governed a republic whose colonies reached Caffa on the Black Sea and Chios in the Aegean.

Pisa fell at Meloria in 1284. Venice stayed the enemy for three hundred years. Andrea Doria wrote a new constitution in 1528, tied the republic to Spain and turned Genoa into the banker of an empire, lending the silver of the Indies back to the kings who shipped it.

The bankers built the Palazzi dei Rolli and put their names on a public list, so that any visiting prince was lodged in a private palace by lot. A French fleet burned the city in 1684. Austria took it in the next century and lost it to a stone thrown by a boy named Balilla, and Napoleon ended the republic before Piemonte absorbed Liguria in 1815.

Steel and shipyards filled Sampierdarena, Mazzini and Columbus were claimed as sons, and Renzo Piano turned the derelict quays back toward the city for the Columbus year.

Where is Genoa?

Genoa is squeezed between the Ligurian Sea and the Apennines in north-western Italy. The city has no plain. It runs for kilometres along the shore in a thin strip of quays, tunnels and terraces, climbing wherever the slope allows and stopping where the ridge does.

Two torrents come down to the sea through it, the Polcevera on the west and the Bisagno on the east, and the seventeenth-century Mura Nuove climb the hills behind to Forte Sperone. Portofino lies down the coast.

What is the climate of Genoa?

Genoa is a wet city for the Mediterranean. The Apennines stand close behind the coast, and the moist air coming up off the Ligurian Sea is forced straight up them, which turns an autumn storm into a downpour and has sent the Bisagno over its banks more than once. Summers are warm and bright.

Winter rarely freezes on the shore, though the tramontana comes over the ridge cold and dry, and the libeccio pushes swell into the harbour mouth from the south-west. Palms grow along the front.

How do you get to Genoa?

Genoa has two stations, one at each end of the old town. Genova Piazza Principe sits by the port and Genova Brignole by the eastern quarters, and both take the line from Milan through the Giovi pass and the Riviera trains toward Ventimiglia and La Spezia. Ferries sail for Sardinia and Sicily.

Cristoforo Colombo airport stands on reclaimed ground west of the centre at Sestri Ponente, and the A7, A10 and A12 autostrade arrive on viaducts high above the roofs. Driving here is not a pleasure.