| Native Name: | Centro storico di Genova |
| Native Name Lang: | it |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | Italy |
| Subdivision Type1: | Region |
| Subdivision Name1: | Liguria |
| Subdivision Type2: | Province |
| Subdivision Name2: | Genoa |
| Subdivision Type3: | City |
| Subdivision Name3: | Genoa |
The historic center of Genoa is the core of the old town organized in the maze of alleys (caruggi) of medieval origin that runs - from east to west - from the hill of to the Genova Piazza Principe railway station, close to what was once the Palazzo del Principe, residence of Admiral Andrea Doria. Urbanistically, the area is part of Municipio I Centro-Est.
However, the current municipal area was created by the merger, which took place on several occasions starting in the second half of the 19th century, of historic Genoa with adjacent municipalities and towns (now neighborhoods), some of which have more or less ancient historic centers of their own and have been urbanistically revolutionized over the years.
The major urban planning operations carried out from the first half of the 19th century to beyond the middle of the 20th (which are difficult to replicate today, given the increased interest in the protection of historic neighborhoods by the public administration), combined with the damage that occurred during World War II (many of the old buildings were destroyed during the Allied bombing raids), partly disrupted the original fabric of the historic center. Slightly less than a quarter of the buildings (23.5 percent) date from the postwar period or later.
See also: History of Genoa and Sestiere.
The history of the historic core of the Ligurian capital is totally linked to the city's history, from the beginnings of the construction of the first dwellings of the Ligurians on the hill of Castello, to the Roman period, along the years of the Maritime Republics (of which the annalist Caffaro di Rustico da Caschifellone, known simply as the Caffaro, kept note), to the patriotic and insurrectional battles of Young Italy and Giuseppe Mazzini's Carboneria.
The first hypotheses about the history of ancient Genoa, unrelated to mythology or propagandistic versions of its origins and pre-Roman period, date back to the 17th century (an example is Odoardo Ganducio's Discorso sopra l'iscrittione, ouero epitafio ritrouato a Tortona in vn marmo, d' vn decurione antico genuese, 1614), but only with the discoveries that have occurred since the end of the 19th century and the subsequent study of the finds has a clearer (albeit partly incomplete) view of the city's real past become available. However, many of the publications describing the city's history up to the mid-19th century did not address the question of the location of the earliest settlements or the period in which they originated.[1] Reconstructions of past centuries did not always prove to be accurate in the light of new discoveries, and it often occurred that they contained errors, due to a lack of archaeological sources and/or an attempt to locate elements of the ancient city based on those, more modern, of Genoa visible at the time when these hypotheses were made.[2]
The habit of building on existing structures (often recycling materials salvaged from earlier constructions, even from places outside Genoa), the numerous alterations and expansions of pre-existing buildings and churches carried out during periods of economic prosperity and growth of the city, or even the outright urbanistic revolutions caused by the growing need to improve the city's road network, as well as the destruction wrought by French bombardments in the 17th century, those related to the Savoy's repression of the independence uprisings of 1849, and finally those suffered at the hands of the Allies in World War II, which were followed by related reconstructions, have given rise to a very heterogeneous building situation, with streets and squares where, within the space of a few dozen meters, buildings can be found separated from each other by centuries of history. Most of the ancient buildings that make up the historic center date back to the 12th and 13th centuries,[3] although they have often undergone later modifications.
The area of the historic center is bounded by the watersheds that divide it from the Polcevera Valley to the northwest and the Bisagno Valley to the northeast. Geologically, it consists of three types of geological formations: the marly limestones of Mount Antola (Carignano and Sarzano areas, as well as the area between Righi and Castelletto and the Lanterna area), dating from the Late Cretaceous and Paleocene periods; the Val Polcevera mudstones (with some outcrops, especially in the Granarolo area), which form the base of the flysch of the earlier formation; Piccapietra marls (Portoria area and part of the Maddalena and Molo districts), dating from the Pliocene.[4]
There were several streams and creeks in the area, which over the centuries were covered and/or channeled into the city sewer system to obtain new building areas. Some terms in the city's toponymy refer to these streams, for example in the street at the Ponte Reale (connecting Piazza Banchi to Piazza Caricamento), where the term "Reale" would not mean royalty, but would be a deformation of rià (rio, or stream, in Genoese), from the riale di Soziglia (i.e., Soziglia stream) that flowed in the area.[5] Another example would be Piazza Acquaverde (opposite the Piazza Principe train station), whose name is said to derive from the presence of a pond rich in algae, hence the greenish color, fed by the Sant'Ugo stream (a legend has it that it was the saint himself who caused the water that fed the pond to gush out).[6]
The historic center is traditionally divided into six areas called sestieri: (Prè,, Molo, Maddalena,, San Teodoro), with the historical trace of the ancient districts of what was once the capital of the Republic of Genoa being maintained. This subdivision falls outside the one that sees the municipal territory organized into more than a dozen wards (or municipalities): the six sestieri are currently included in the territory of the Municipi I Centro Est and II Centro Ovest (for the sestiere of San Teodoro alone).
Streets and alleys traditionally were paved with stones or bricks, which composed various designs, from the more linear ones, such as parallel-row or herringbone placement, to more complex ones. The stone slabs were usually of two sizes, a thin and long type (about 12-15 cm by 70-75 cm), called "cordonini," and a wider type (24-26 cm by 50-60 com) called "tacchi," and sometimes these were alternated with bricks or flanked by cobblestones. In churchyards or palace gardens sometimes the technique of risseu, a cobblestone mosaic typical of Liguria, was used.[7] Over the years, asphalt paving has covered some of the original pavement.
In view of the original core's size of 1.13 km² (i.e., 113 hectares, the area of the Prè-Molo-Maddalena neighborhoods),[8] it is cited as the most extensive old town in Europe. In fact, this may be considered an urban legend, as it turns out to be less extensive than, for example,[9] Rome (1,430 hectares)[10] and Naples (the latter, with its 1,700 hectares, the largest).[11]
The high density of buildings, especially after the enormous building growth that began with the 18th century, nevertheless makes it one of the historical centers with the highest population density: about 23,000 inhabitants live in the oldest area (also including the port area), distributed in 2305 buildings (value as of 1999) on a volume of about 10 million cubic meters.[9]
The area of the historic center, due to the orography of the area, varies, even greatly, depending on the criteria and method used to estimate it. In the Dizionario geografico storico-statistico-commerciale degli Stati di S. M. il Re di Sardegna Volume 7 (published in 1840)[12] by Goffredo Casalis, the surface area of the town is estimated, also using data from M. Cevasco's Statistique de la ville de Genes,[13] published a few years earlier, pointing out how its conformation, endowed with numerous changes in the elevation of the terrain, makes the flat area much less than it actually is:
The text then gives these surface figures (in hectares) for the six sestieri as they were delimited at the time:
| Sestieri | Total area (hectares) | Flat area (hectares) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Vincenzo | 253 | 42 | |
| San Teodoro | 458 | 21 | |
| Pré | 49 | 24 | |
| Maddalena | 23 | 7 | |
| Portoria | 83 | 42 | |
| Molo | 30 | 28 | |
| Total | 896 | 164 |
The municipality of Genoa, for the urban units covering the two districts related to the city center, provides these area values (not all the urban units listed are part of what is identified with the historic center):[14]
| Municipio I Genova Centro Est | Municipio II Genova Centro Ovest | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Urban unit | Total area (hectares) | Population center (hectares) | Urban unit | Total area (hectares) | Population center (hectares) | |
| Lagaccio | 89,48 | 46,23 | Campasso | 82,83 | 69,31 | |
| Oregina | 185,24 | 61,22 | San Gaetano | 34,77 | 34,36 | |
| Prè | 44,96 | 37,29 | Sampierdarena | 53,01 | 52,06 | |
| Maddalena | 26,95 | 22,33 | Belvedere | 47,34 | 47,29 | |
| Molo | 34,96 | 33,42 | San Bartolomeo | 89,49 | 66,07 | |
| San Nicola | 80,85 | 65,36 | Angeli | 74,72 | 63,78 | |
| Castelletto | 67,71 | 67,71 | San Teodoro | 103,04 | 90,48 | |
| Manin | 49,93 | 44,19 | ||||
| San Vincenzo | 68,53 | 59,36 | ||||
| Carignano | 59,13 | 58,53 | ||||
See also: History of Genoa.
As written earlier, due to the frequent and continuous construction of new buildings on top of what previously existed and after the bombing of the last world war, no Roman or pre-Roman remains are visible. Over the past two centuries, remodeling works in some parts of the city (e.g., Via XX Settembre and surrounding areas between the 18th and 19th centuries), as well as restoration and extension works on buildings and streets, have repeatedly brought to light numerous ruins and objects related to early city settlements or the later Roman period.[15]
During excavations for the construction of the subway, a 12-meter-long dry-stone wall with nearby remains of hearths and a canal were found in the area adjacent to the Brignole train station, the origin of which would date back to a period between the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. This construction would demonstrate the probable presence of small settlements in the area since the Bronze Age.[16] A fraction of the wall was later reconstructed and displayed in the subway station that arose in the area, along with another find, namely part of the churchyard of the ancient church of Santa Maria degli Incrociati[17] (a name given to the Hospitallers who had a shelter and church there in the late Middle Ages).
The presence of the wall (believed after studies to be the retaining wall of a road), as well as the probable remains of a pile-dwelling found during work in the area of the present-day Piazza della Vittoria (the dating of which would date it to a period between 4790 B.C. and 4460 B.C.), led archaeologists of the Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Liguria to assume that there was a river port at the nearby mouth of the Bisagno stream, with a settlement behind it.[18] [19]
Reconstructions made by historians in the second half of the 20th century, prior to these findings, had identified the first port area in the area of the "ancient port," about 1.5 km (as the crow flies) west/northwest of this possible river port. There, in the area of the eighteenth-century portofranco (roughly today's Piazza Cavour), at the time of the first settlements at the base of the Sarzano hill (later named Mandraccio), artifacts were found spread over several layers, the oldest of which dated (through some wooden remains) between the 10th and 9th centuries BC, as well as layers containing artifacts (including many amphorae) dated as belonging to the centuries between the 6th and 1st centuries B.C.[20] In January 2013, during archaeological inspections carried out along the nearby Spinola Bridge as part of the work related to the expansion of the Genoa Aquarium with a new dolphin tank, remains of vases and amphorae, both Etruscan and Roman, were found, some of them containing fruit stones, legumes and seeds. The finds, recovered at a depth of about 13 meters, would be several hundred meters from what is estimated to have been the coastline in Roman times, leading to speculation that the area was used as a sort of dumping ground by ships.[21]
As for the earliest, more developed settlements, in pre-Roman times, it is believed that the hill of Sarzano (also known as di Castello or Colle del Castello, perhaps from the early medieval castle on the site, later to become the convent of San Silvestro), from which the underlying stretch of sea could be controlled, and its beach, were among the first inhabited places in the center of Genoa. Precisely in order to verify the thesis that saw the Sarzano hill as the site of pre-Roman settlements (specifically a possible boundary wall), the first archaeological excavations carried out explicitly in the area for research purposes were carried out in 1939 by Luigi Bernabò Brea: the area investigated was the one on which rested part of the (destroyed) church of Santa Maria in Passione, but the results and conclusions reached are not known for sure. More systematic excavations took place in the following decades, facilitated by the work of restoring the area after the bombing suffered during World War II.[22] The findings show that as early as the 6th century B.C. the beach was a point of exchange between merchants from the Mediterranean cities that frequented the port and the inland populations. Excavations on the hill, after bombings had destroyed the convent of San Silvestro, showed that layers as much as four meters thick were present in the area, with ruins, walls and stones used in earlier construction. The construction of dwellings began around the 6th century B.C. and continued until the 2nd century B.C., while around the 4th century B.C. the area was protected with an initial enclosure of drystone walls. The top of the hill was probably flattened, and terracing was built along its sides.[23] Until the recent discoveries in the area of Brignole and the mouth of the Bisagno River, mentioned just above, which have raised new questions about the location of the first city nucleus, it was believed that the port city of Genoa at that time most likely included the area corresponding roughly to the Molo district.
Centuries later, the Sarzano hill shows nothing of the original buildings, but highlights the Embriaci tower, the convent of Santa Maria di Castello, and the Campopisano esplanade, a symbol of the naval victory of the Republic of Genoa over the neighboring Maritime Republic of Pisa.
Numerous burials, containing urns (cremation was used, as in much of the ancient world) and grave goods, have also been found in the area of the historic center: the aforementioned work on the construction of Via XX Settembre brought to light 73 tombs in the upper part of the street and around Piazza De Ferrari, which with work in the area in the following decades came to 121 (late 1960s). It is estimated that this necropolis had been used between the fifth and third centuries B.C.[24] The tombs, part of which had already been looted or damaged in ancient times, each contained several urns and were, for the most part of those discovered, of a type similar to that used by the Etruscans of northern Etruria, different from that typical of the Ligurian populations of previous centuries, probably the result of a custom adopted through immigration.[25] Historians, based on the characteristics of the tombs found (such as the greater density of them in some areas) and the discovery of the remains of other destroyed burials, believe that those identified are only a small part of those that originally constituted the necropolis. More recent work related to events hosted by the city has led to the discovery of early medieval burials in Via San Lorenzo[26] (in 2001, during road resurfacing work for the Genoa G8) and a burial mound in the Acquasola area (in 2008, during work for the subway). The latter discovery, according to some initial analyses, could refer to settlements temporally preceding the finds found in Castello Hill, thus proving that the first settlements in this area of the city center undergoing works would predate what has been believed so far.
While the Etruscans probably traded with local populations even before the 6th century B.C., it was only with the partitioning of areas of influence in the Mediterranean Sea that occurred after the Battle of Alalia (c. 540 B.C.) that ancient Genoa came strongly into the sphere of Etruscan political/cultural influence. The result of this interest in the area by the neighboring Etruscan civilization would lead to the enlargement of the settlement on Castello Hill.[27] [28] According to a recent theory, the name "Genoa" itself would derive from the Etruscan term "kainua" (new city), which probably could have been employed to refer to new settlements.[29] Finds that can be linked to the Etruscan presence also include a probable boundary stone, containing the Etruscan-language inscription mi nemetiés, identified in the area of the former convent of San Silvestro and dated around the first half of the fifth century B.C.[30] [31] [32]
Adding to the difficulty in reconstructing this period of the city's history, there is also the fact that not even the later Latin sources (at least those that have come down to us) report information on the origin of Genua, but merely mention it in connection with its relations with Rome.[33]
In later centuries the city of Genoa would expand into the areas near the hill of Castello, but within the boundaries from present-day Great Genoa, established in 1926, there were then settlements of other Ligurian peoples, as evidenced by the bronze Polcevera tablet from 117 BC. Records of Genoa at the time, however, are not very numerous, with the exception of those that show the city and its inhabitants engaged in the wars of the Romans, often in a position opposite to that of the other Ligurian tribes and towns.
Genoa, like other Ligurian towns, was probably linked to Rome by economic and political motives as early as the 4th century BCE. During the Second Punic War the city, regarded as foedus aequum in Roman international politics, was destroyed by General Mago Barca, Hannibal's brother, in 205 BC. A few years later the propraetor Spurius Lucretius undertook the reconstruction, probably because of the strategic importance of the city and its port, due to its location that allowed both sea access to the western Mediterranean and land access to the Po Valley.[34] The new post-reconstruction settlement probably had its center no longer on the hill, but in an intermediate area between it and the port, between the present Via di San Bernardo and Via di Canneto il Lungo, in the Molo sestiere.[35]
The author and traveler Henry Aubert, in his essay Cities and People of Italy (Villes et gens d'Italie, published in Paris in 1923), provides a concise portrait of the historic center of a city-emporium, defined as nothing more than a marketplace with no political importance. Aubert cannot help but quote the geographer Strabo when the latter stated how in Genoa nothing was sold but honey, cattle, hides, wine, and oil. Aubert believed that the historic city occupied the same geographical position as the time in which he was writing, between the Lighthouse (not the Lanterna, but the old lighthouse on the pier that illuminated the entrance to the port in antiquity), which dates from Roman times, and the on one side, the sea and the fort called Castelletto today on the other.
The writer states:
He concludes:
In the Corvetto Square area, during construction work on some buildings (in the fall of 2011), the remains of a farm from the Roman period (2nd century BC) were found. According to early research there would also be traces of canalization, in which water taken from streams originating from the Righi area flowed, and the terrain would show the presence of terracing.[36]
After the reconstruction the city's port, and consequently the city itself, grew in importance. In 147 B.C. the Roman consul Postumius Albinus began the construction of the Via Postumia, which connected Genoa with Aquileia, equipped with a river port accessible from the Adriatic Sea.[37] Genoa then became, during the reign of Gaius Julius Caesar, the most important port in Cisalpine Gaul.[38]
Finds and research in recent decades suggest that Genoa was crossed by a number of Roman roads, the route of which, however, is not certain and may have changed over time. One of the hypotheses involves the bifurcation of the road coming from the east at the height of the necropolis in the present-day Acquasola area: from there one road would have transited between the hill of Sant'Andrea and the hill of Castello, then reaching the harbor area and skirting the shore, while the second would have taken a more northerly route, through what would become the sestieri of Portoria and Maddalena, rejoining the former in the latter and continuing towards the west.
The city of Genoa is featured in the Tabula Peutingeriana, a medieval reproduction of a Roman map, which showed the main routes of the Empire, and which is believed to have been compiled in later stages, probably starting in the second century B.C. (the Via Aemilia Scauri, built only in 109 B.C., being omitted from it). Strabo in his Geographica (book IV, chapter 6), published in its first version a few years before the end of the 1st century BC, calls Genoa "the emporium of the Ligurians." The city is also mentioned as an oppidum in the list concerning the Ligurian region that Pliny the Elder compiled in the third chapter of his Naturalis historia, situating it between the Porcifera and Fertor rivers (normally identified with the Polcevera and Bisagno streams):[25]
While the construction of the Via Aemilia Scauri cut off the city and the entire coast from direct trade to southern France (then part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis), it had probably prevented the territory from being caught up in the passage of armies in the subsequent civil wars of 49-45 B.C. and 44-31 B.C.[39]
A certain regularity in the streets that make up the medieval historic center (roughly comprised between present-day Via San Lorenzo, Via Filippo Turati, Salita Pollaioli and the hill of Castello) and the fact that even the few finds of buildings of Roman origin unearthed in the area seem to have an orientation compatible with this arrangement, has led to the assumption that a military encampment existed in the area, from whose shape the neighborhood would have developed.[40] However, there is no firm evidence to support this hypothesis.[41]
The remains of a Roman domus were found in the area of today's Matteotti Square (near the Ducal Palace). Excavations in the area, carried out on several occasions since 1975, identified the first use of the area in the final period of the Roman Republic (1st century B.C.)[42] The building, passing through numerous modifications and periods of decay, would remain in use until the 7th century. According to the findings, the area would have undergone heavy modifications in the 12th and 13th centuries, when a cemetery was created connected to the nearby church of St. Ambrose, but by that time the walls that made up the building had probably already collapsed.[43] An epigraph dedicated to Fortuna Redux was also found in the excavations, probably belonging to some religious building or monument that existed in the area in Roman times.[44] A short distance from the remains of the domus, adjacent to the corner of the church of St. Ambrose, the remains of a water pipe, made (or perhaps simply restored) in the 3rd century, were found during the same excavations. Other finds, from the Republican and even later periods, were made in nearby areas, such as those in 1986 in the area occupied by the Scuole Pie Church.[45]
After the beginning of the Christian era, some legends, taken up by medieval and Renaissance writers such as Jacobus de Voragine and Agostino Schiaffino, have it that St. Peter[46] and Saints Nazarius and Celsus[47] passed through the city during the first century. Another legend has it that St. Lawrence and Pope Sixtus II stopped in the city on their way to Spain, being housed in a house located in the area of today's Cathedral of St. Lawrence, where, after their killing, a chapel and then a church dedicated to the saint would rise.[48] Based on archaeological findings, a stable Christian community was certainly present in the mid-3rd century and used the very area of St. Lawrence as its burial place (but the cemetery that was present was already used in Roman times), however, there is no certainty about the identity and exact sequence of the first bishops of the city's diocese, the best known of whom is St. Syrus.[49] By his work, or that of his predecessor Felice, the construction of Genoa's first cathedral, initially dedicated to the Twelve Apostles and from the sixth century to St. Syrus himself, would be begun in the area west of the civitas.
Due to some letters (dated 507 and 511) by which Theodoric the Great granted the restoration of an old synagogue, there is information about the presence of a Jewish community in the city in the early 6th century.[50]
In 569 the curia of Milan, ruled by Honoratus Castiglioni, fleeing from the Lombard king Alboin, found refuge in Genoa, where it remained for about 80 years. The curia settled in the area of what is now Piazza Matteotti, building a church there, dedicated to St. Ambrose, patron saint of Milan, which over the centuries became the present Church of Jesus and Saints Ambrose and Andrew.[51]
According to reports two centuries later by Paul the Deacon in his Historia Langobardorum, at the same time as the descent of the Lombards into Italy, in the 670s, Liguria was struck by a plague, which caused numerous deaths and the abandonment of cities and pastures in the countryside as the inhabitants fled: