Genoa Travel Guide: Italy's Forgotten Port City

Genoa (Genova) is one of Italy’s great overlooked cities. The largest medieval city centre in Europe — a maze of narrow lanes called caruggi — sits behind a port that shaped world history: Christopher Columbus was born here, and Genoese banking financed much of Renaissance Europe. It is not a polished tourist destination in the way Florence or Venice are, and that is largely the point.

The caruggi

The medieval lanes of the old city are the most authentic historic centre in Italy — narrow, labyrinthine, lined with Renaissance and Baroque palaces that have been continuously inhabited for 600 years. The UNESCO-listed Palazzi dei Rolli (the collection of noble palaces that housed visiting dignitaries) are scattered through the caruggi; several are open to visitors and architecturally extraordinary.

Via Garibaldi (now called Strada Nuova) is the grandest street — a 16th-century planned avenue of noble palaces, three of which are open as museums: Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, and Palazzo Tursi. Together they hold Van Dyck, Caravaggio, Dürer, and Rubens.

The port and aquarium

The old port (Porto Antico) was redesigned by Renzo Piano for the 1992 Genoa Expo. The Acquario di Genova is the largest aquarium in Europe. The Bigo (a crane-like panoramic lift) and the old cotton warehouses now contain exhibitions and restaurants.

Food: pesto at its source

Pesto alla Genovese — basil, Ligurian olive oil, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Pecorino, pine nuts, garlic — was invented here and is done better here than anywhere else. Trofie or trenette pasta is the traditional pairing. Focaccia genovese (olive oil bread, thicker and more flavoursome than Tuscan focaccia) is the street food. Farinata (chickpea pancake baked in a wood oven) is the other essential.