Genoa travel guide

Top 10 sights in Genoa

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Jean-Philippe Boulet · CC BY 3.0

   Costa Concordia

   A cruise ship of a hundred and fourteen thousand tonnes that struck rock off Giglio in January 2012 and capsized, with thirty-two deaths. Refloating her was the largest salvage of a passenger ship ever attempted; she was towed to Genoa in 2014 and cut up over three years.

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2. 

   2© Tassiano Daniele · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Lighthouse of Genoa

   The lighthouse of the port, rebuilt in its present form in 1543 and seventy-seven metres to the lantern — one of the oldest working lighthouses in the world. Genoese use it as shorthand for the city itself, and a walkway now leads to it along the old walls.

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3. 

   3

   Genoa Cathedral

   A striped black and white cathedral begun in the twelfth century, its front carrying two stone lions and, inside the nave, a British naval shell fired in February 1941 that came through the roof and failed to explode. It is displayed where it landed.

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4. 

   4© sailko · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Palazzo Rosso

   A seventeenth-century palace on the Strada Nuova, part of the Rolli World Heritage listing, kept as a house museum. Van Dyck's portraits of the Brignole-Sale family hang in the rooms they were painted for, which almost never happens.

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5. 

   5© Piergiulio90 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Doge's Palace

   The palace of the doges of the Genoese republic, whose independence lasted, with interruptions, from 1099 to 1797. It is now a museum and exhibition centre, and the vaulted council halls give some sense of what a merchant republic thought of itself.

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6. 

   6© Stillyna at Italian Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Aquarium of Genoa

   The largest aquarium in Italy, built for the Columbus quincentenary of 1992 to a design by Renzo Piano, on a pier in the old harbour. Its dolphin and manatee tanks are the draw; the harbour redevelopment around it turned the port back towards the city.

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7. 

   7© ValeDeNe / Teatroge · CC BY-SA 4.0

   piazza De Ferrari

   Main square of Genoa, laid out in the nineteenth century where the medieval town met the new districts. The bronze fountain at its centre dates from 1936.

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8. 

   8© Luca Dea · CC BY 4.0

   Santa Maria Assunta

   Cathedral of Genoa, begun in 1098 and banded in black and white marble. A British shell fired in 1941 landed in the nave and failed to explode; it is still displayed inside.

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9. 

   9© Tiia Monto · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Nervi

   A former fishing village east of the centre, now a Genoa suburb, with a two-kilometre promenade cut along the rocks above the sea. Three villa parks run down to it and it is the best walk in the city.

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10. 

    10

    Pegli

    A western suburb absorbed into Genoa in 1926, whose Villa Durazzo Pallavicini park is a romantic garden designed in the 1840s as a narrative — the visitor walks a story through grottoes, a lake and a temple in a fixed sequence.

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1. 

   1© Luca Galli from Torino, Italy · CC BY 2.0

   Palazzo San Giorgio

   The palace of the Bank of St George, founded in 1407 and among the oldest banks in the world — it effectively financed the republic and administered its colonies. Marco Polo was held prisoner in the earlier building on the site and dictated his travels there.

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2. 

   2© SUBnormali Team. Original uploader was Yoruno at it.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

   MT Haven

   A supertanker that caught fire and broke up off Genoa in April 1991 with a hundred and forty-four thousand tonnes of crude aboard, killing six of her crew — the worst oil spill in Mediterranean history. The wreck lies deep off Arenzano and is dived by technical divers.

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3. 

   3© JoachimKohler-HB · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato

   A church whose seventeenth-century interior was decorated by most of the significant baroque workshops in Genoa at once — gilded stucco, marble and frescoed vaults, all at maximum intensity. Its name records that houses outside the walls were levelled to build it.

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4. 

   4© Sailko · CC BY 3.0

   Royal Palace of Genoa

   Palace in Genoa built from 1643 for the Balbi family and bought by the House of Savoy in 1824. Its hall of mirrors and terrace over the harbour are open as a museum.

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5. 

   5© or_kriminal · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Sestri Ponente

   A district on the western shore of Genoa in the Medio Ponente borough. Shipyards and aircraft works made it an industrial quarter through the twentieth century, and as those sites are cleared the waterfront is being returned to the city.

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6. 

   6© Alessio Sbarbaro User_talk:Yoggysot · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Santa Maria delle Vigne

   A basilica founded in the tenth century among the vineyards outside the then city, hence the name, and rebuilt in baroque over the Romanesque core — its bell tower and cloister are the surviving early parts. Alessandro Stradella, murdered in 1682, is buried in it.

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7. 

   7© Domenico Lucà · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Arco della Vittoria

   A triumphal arch on Piazza della Vittoria commemorating the people of Genoa killed in the First World War. The architect Marcello Piacentini designed it with the sculptor Arturo Dazzi, and it is a leading example of the commemorative architecture of Italian fascism.

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8. 

   8© Yoggysot · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Sampierdarena

   The port and industrial district west of the centre, where the container terminals and the shipyards are. It was a town of villas before the harbour swallowed it, and several of those villas survive absurdly among the cranes.

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9. 

   9© Postcrosser · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Palazzo Bianco

   A palace on the Strada Nuova, part of the Rolli listing, holding Genoa's collection of Flemish and Dutch painting — Rubens, Van Dyck and Memling, bought by merchants who traded with Antwerp. It connects internally to two neighbouring palaces on one ticket.

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10. 

    10© Marta1977 · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Villa del Principe

    One of the great suburban villas of Genoa, at Fassolo. It was built outside the walls in the sixteenth century as the private residence of Andrea Doria, Prince of Melfi and admiral of Genoa, and regularly received emperors, kings and other foreign guests.

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