Historic center of Genoa

The historic center of Genoa is the core of the old town organized in the maze of alleys of medieval origin that runs – from east to west – from the hill of Carignano 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, some of which have more or less ancient historic centers of their own and have been urbanistically transformed 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 century, combined with the damage that occurred during World War II, partly disrupted the original fabric of the historic center. Slightly less than a quarter of the buildings date from the postwar period or later.

History and features

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, 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, 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 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. 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.
The habit of building on existing structures, 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, 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, dating from the Late Cretaceous and Paleocene periods; the Val Polcevera mudstones, which form the base of the flysch of the earlier formation; Piccapietra marls, dating from the Pliocene.
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, where the term "Reale" would not mean royalty, but would be a deformation of rià, from the riale di Soziglia that flowed in the area. Another example would be Piazza Acquaverde, 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.
The historic center is traditionally divided into six areas called sestieri:, 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 : the six sestieri are currently included in the territory of the Municipi I Centro Est and II Centro Ovest.
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, called "cordonini," and a wider type 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. Over the years, asphalt paving has covered some of the original pavement.

Surface

In view of the original core's size of 1.13 km², 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, Rome and Naples.
File:Genova panorama dall alto.JPG|thumb|Glimpse with part of the historic center, photographed from above the university's botanical garden. On the upper left is the Clock Skyscraper built in the 1930s to a design by Marcello Piacentini. In the center of the photo is the bell tower of San Lorenzo Cathedral and in the background part of the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, the work of Alessi
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, distributed in 2305 buildings on a volume of about 10 million cubic meters.
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 by Goffredo Casalis, the surface area of the town is estimated, also using data from M. Cevasco's Statistique de la ville de Genes, 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 for the six sestieri as they were delimited at the time:

Sestieri	Total area	Flat area
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 :

The development of early Genoa and early settlements

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, 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.
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. 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.
The presence of the wall, as well as the probable remains of a pile-dwelling found during work in the area of the present-day Piazza della Vittoria, 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.
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 west/northwest of this possible river port. There, in the area of the eighteenth-century portofranco, at the time of the first settlements at the base of the Sarzano hill, artifacts were found spread over several layers, the oldest of which dated between the 10th and 9th centuries BC, as well as layers containing artifacts dated as belonging to the centuries between the 6th and 1st centuries B.C. 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.
As for the earliest, more developed settlements, in pre-Roman times, it is believed that the hill of Sarzano, 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, 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 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. 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. 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.
File:Genova-centro storico-IMG 1503.JPG|thumb|left|Sarzano Hill. The Embriaci tower and the bell tower of the church of Santa Maria di Castello are visible.
Numerous burials, containing urns 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. It is estimated that this necropolis had been used between the fifth and third centuries B.C. 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. Historians, based on the characteristics of the tombs found 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 and a burial mound in the Acquasola area. 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 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. According to a recent theory, the name "Genoa" itself would derive from the Etruscan term "kainua", which probably could have been employed to refer to new settlements. 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.
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 report information on the origin of Genua, but merely mention it in connection with its relations with Rome.