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 (Genoa) 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.
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.
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.

The Roman Era

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. 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.
The author and traveler Henry Aubert, in his essay Cities and People of Italy, 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, which dates from Roman times, and the hill of Carignano 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, the remains of a farm from the Roman period 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.
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. Genoa then became, during the reign of Gaius Julius Caesar, the most important port in Cisalpine Gaul.
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.. Strabo in his Geographica, 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 :
While the construction of the Via Aemilia Scauri cut off the city and the entire coast from direct trade to southern France, 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.
A certain regularity in the streets that make up the medieval historic center 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. However, there is no firm evidence to support this hypothesis.
The remains of a Roman domus were found in the area of today's Matteotti Square. 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 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. 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. 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 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.
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 and Saints Nazarius and Celsus 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. 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, 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. 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.

The early Middle Ages

Due to some letters 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.
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.
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:
Between 641 and 643, the Lombard king Rothari conquered Liguria and assaulted, among others, the city of Genoa, sacking and burning some areas of it, and probably destroying the walls already present, about whose actual existence, extent and position in this historical period, however, there is no shared opinion among scholars. According to several historians there were in fact defensive works present, predating those about whose existence there is certainty, from the time of the earliest pre-Roman settlements, but for none of these fortifications is there certain evidence of their actual existence, eventual location and extent, or their eventual modification over time.
Following the annexation to the Lombard kingdom, Bishop Forte fled the city, taking shelter with the Pope in Rome, and it would be his successor, St. John the Good, who brought the seat of the curia of Milan back to the city of origin, although on the date of Forte's departure from Genoa and this relocation there is no unambiguousness in the sources.
After the destruction of the walls by Rothari, the expansion of ancient Genoa and the need to defend itself from the assaults of enemies, as had been the Lombards first and the Saracens later, would lead, starting a few centuries before the year one thousand, to the construction of several walls, of increasingly wider radius, to protect the built-up area, which in later centuries, when not included in new defense works, would be incorporated by the built-up area itself, demolished or buried to make room for new buildings.
Between 848 and 889 a first new city wall was built, partly with the financial help of the Carolingians, equipped with four gates and four towers, encompassing an area of about 20 hectares. Francesco Maria Accinelli, a Genoese historian of the eighteenth century, reports the expansion of the city wall, with the creation of the four gates, in 925 or, as he reports, according to other sources in 935. This did not prevent the city from again falling victim, in the following decades, to assaults by Saracen forces, which in 935 managed to reach and sack even the church of San Siro.
In 862 there are sources attesting to the presence of Benedictine monks, reporting to the Abbey of St. Columbanus of Bobbio, at the church of San Pietro della Porta. Later they would be entrusted with the church of St. Stephen, also outside the walls, whose construction had been decided by Bishop Theodulf.
In the third decade of the 10th century, the city was attacked and sacked several times by Saracen pirates, who took numerous prisoners, although the Genoese fleet managed to intercept the Arab ships after the last reprisal, freeing fellow citizens captured during this last attack. It was precisely the continuous assaults that were among the reasons that, in 985, led the bishop of Genoa to transfer the episcopal see from the church of San Siro, to that of San Lorenzo, inside the then existing walls.
In the mid-10th century Berengar II of Ivrea, King of Italy, divided the north into three marches, entrusting the one that included Genoa and eastern Liguria to Oberto I. In the struggle between Berengar and Otto of Saxony, Marquis Oberto sided with the latter, while the city of Genoa swore allegiance to Berengar and his son Adalbert, thus obtaining a diploma in 958 declaring the city and the possessions of its citizens independent from "duke, marquis and count, sculdascio, dean or any other great or small person of our kingdom." These concessions allowed the city to officially, though not fully, gain a form of political independence.
Prior to the construction of the city walls in the 12th century, three zones were distinguished in the city: the castrum, i.e., the area of the initial settlement around Sarzano; the ripa area, where traffic and activities related to the port took place; and finally the burgus, outside the walls, where the first cathedral was located, the church of San Siro, which still exists today, although it has been partially destroyed and rebuilt several times. The construction of the walls, in addition to incorporating the peripheral area of the church of San Siro into the city, also included the area of the Basilica of Santa Maria delle Vigne, which had risen about three centuries earlier in an area called Vigne del Re, a name that would attest to the probable presence of vineyards immediately outside the previous city center. The cultivation of vineyards and the presence of some chestnut groves, would also be confirmed by a document from 886, which describes the area as owned by the monks of St. Peter's Church, the clergymen of St. Syrus Cathedral and the family of the viscount Ydo.

The emergence of the Compagna Communis and the late Middle Ages

This last period of expansion, at the turn of the early and late Middle Ages, saw the first agreements between the city's powers, which would give rise to the Compagna Communis, which would in turn be the basis on which the municipality would be born, and the elevation of the diocese of Genoa to the rank of metropolitan archdiocese. The compagne into which Genoa was divided, corresponding to as many areas of the ancient city, documented as seven in 1130 and eight in 1134, were Castello, Maccagnana, Piazzalunga, San Lorenzo, Della Porta, Soziglia, Pré and Porta Nuova.
Beginning in 1125 the Sottoripa arcades were built, of which, after centuries of modifications, demolitions and reconstructions, a significant section still exists on the edge of Caricamento square and Turati street. The original route of the arcade covered the route from Porta dei Vacca to the area of the new pier, all within a few meters of the piers.
At that time the area was filled with stores and inns that for a period also occupied the front of the arcades, making them a kind of gallery. Despite the changes that the buildings underwent, on some of the facades, immediately above the arches of the arcade, traces of the old city aqueduct are visible.
Historian Federico Donaver, in his 1912 Le Vie di Genova, describes the area in medieval times as follows:
As already mentioned, Barbarossa's sights on Italy led to the construction of a new defensive wall much larger than the previous one, the construction work on which was begun in 1155 and, after a brief pause, resumed in 1158. After a few centuries, to differentiate them from the later walls, they took the common name of old walls.
Initially, not all of the area within the walls was built on, as there were numerous vegetable gardens and land free of buildings owned by the various noble families and monasteries present. It was not until the following century that the urbanization of the city was completed, characterized by a geometrically more regular layout than in the older areas, and with the quarters for artisans and merchants concentrated in the outlying areas.
The city was not unaffected by the clashes between Guelphs and Ghibellines that took place from the 12th century, which intersected with the internal political rivalries of the various noble families and with the war against Ghibelline Pisa. The hostilities, in addition to causing turmoil in the city, would also affect inland and coastal towns under the control of the aforementioned noble families. Fire was one of the recurring threats to the buildings in the historic center: between the beginning of the 12th century and the middle of the 13th century, several districts were severely damaged, if not destroyed, by flames. Among the causes were the high density of buildings and the use of wood, both for the interiors of houses and to raise existing stone and limestone buildings with new floors.
In 1260 the people's captain Guglielmo Boccanegra had the first nucleus of the Palazzo San Giorgio built in the harbor area as the seat of the municipality. Two years later, with the deposition of Boccanegra, the seat of the Municipality would be suppressed. On the sides of the palace, the piers ponte dei legni and ponte del pedaggio would later be built. With the return of the captains of the people in 1271, the Municipality would be moved to the building that formed the original nucleus of the present Doge's Palace, then owned by Count Alberto Fieschi of Lavagna. The Fieschi family had sought to build a palace in the central area of the city, buying some houses from the Dorias, buildings that were located between Piazza San Matteo and the Serravalle gate. The municipality would officially acquire the building in 1294 and would further expand and modify it in the following centuries. The title of "Ducal" would be assigned only with the beginning of the republic of doges in 1339, the first of whom would be Simone Boccanegra, great-grandson of the captain of the people Guglielmo and from a family of wealthy merchants, called by acclamation to the position by the popular party, in opposition to the patrician party that had ruled the city until then. Among his first decisions was the exile for some of the patrician families who had opposed him and his supporters and the decision that representatives of noble families historically involved in the struggles between the two factions should be precluded from the dogate. As a result of this reform, new merchant families gained power, the so-called Cappellazzi, but they, too, soon proved to be dedicated to intrigue and violence. The office, initially planned for life, in fact turned out to be much shorter, both for Boccanegra and his successors.
During the Battle of Meloria in August 1284, the Genoese fleet captured some 9,000 soldiers and sailors of the republic of Pisa, locking them up in an area located in the vicinity of the walls and harbor, which to this day bears the name of the Pisan camp. The Pisan Republic did not honor the agreements made after the defeat, and a new Genoese fleet attacked and sacked the Pisan harbor and adjoining areas in August 1290: among the items brought back home were parts of the chain that, for defensive purposes, closed the Tuscan port, broken by the Genoese, and which, divided, were displayed in some of the gates of the walls and in several churches and noble villas. The chains remained in Genoa until the approach of the unification of Italy, when, as a sign of appeasement, they were returned to the city of Pisa.
In the second half of the 14th century, the Alberghi were created, a union of noble families who shared both spheres of influence in the city's political and commercial life and real estate holdings found in the same areas of Genoa. In the following centuries their existence would be marked by several reforms, the result of infighting between families and the emergence of new powers. In the same period the Republic was involved in the war of Chioggia, against its rival Venice, a clash of fluctuating course that, although short-lived, would cost both maritime republics a great deal in terms of resources employed. Several buildings in the historic center incorporated architectural details that were the result of looting during the war, such as the lions of St. Mark found on the side of the church of San Marco al Molo and on the facade of Palazzo Marcantonio Giustiniani, both from Istrian Pula.
Between the end of the 14th and the 15th centuries, a real red-light district was created in Genoa, in the area where Castelletto is now located, in which prostitution was strictly regulated. The taxation from this activity was redeployed almost entirely for maintenance works and the expansion of the port. During this period the Bank of Saint George was founded, which had its headquarters in the palace of the same name: created at the behest of the city's French governor Jean II Le Maingre, it would remain in operation for about four centuries, until it was dissolved by Napoleon. The initial purpose of the institution was to manage the enormous public debt of the republic, unifying the various societies that had previously taken care of it. This was a period of crisis for the republic, which would last until the early 16th century, with doges often being the expression of foreign powers: first the Milan of the Visconti and later the Sforza, and France. Foreign control over politics and constant internal struggles, however, did not put a brake on continued building growth and renovation of pre-existing areas, and in Via San Luca, then the main route from the center to the western edge of the city, the palaces of the Spinola, Grimaldi, Pinelli, and Lomellini families were built.
In 1493 a first group of Sephardic Jews driven out of Spain arrived in Genoa and were forced to settle in the area of Via del Campo and Piazzetta Fregoso. Jewish immigration to the city in these decades consisted largely of former merchants and traders who, in the new situation prevailing in the Iberian Peninsula under the reign of Ferdinand II of Aragon, who was adverse to the Jews, had seen much of their wealth disappear in a short time. Almost two centuries later, starting in 1658, this area, near the church of Santa Sabina and part of the Prè sestiere, would become Genoa's first Jewish ghetto. The collapse of the Genoese population that had occurred a few years earlier due to the plague, with the related demand for new labor and commercial skills, had made it possible for Jews to obtain Genoese citizenship, albeit with severe limitations: with the establishment of the ghetto, the alleys and streets that allowed access to the area were closed off by gates, and among the obligations imposed on the population living there was that of attending masses held in the nearby churches of San Siro and delle Vigne. However, in contrast to what was happening in the same period in other cities located on Italian territory, the constant humiliation and provocation to which the Jewish population was subjected almost never resulted in explicit acts of violence. This area, popularly still called "the ghetto," is one of the most degraded in the historic center, often in the news for the widespread transsexual prostitution that takes place in its caruggi. In the early years of the 21st century, a project to redevelop the area was financed by the municipality.

From the Renaissance to the end of the Republic of Genoa

The 16th century, with the rebirth of the Republic of Genoa by Andrea Doria, was a period of strong expansion, known as "El siglo de los Genoveses". Symbolizing this period of growth in the Maddalena sestiere, on behalf of some of the leading noble Genoese families of the time, the Strada Nuova, today's Via Garibaldi, about 250 m long, with its stately palaces, was planned and then built, in which, starting in 1576, the Rolli system was established. The work took about 40 years to complete: from the acquisition of the land in 1551 to the completion of the final paving in 1591.
Regarding the construction of Via Garibaldi in place of the pre-existing medieval quarter, a symbol of the strong desire for renewal at that time, Donaver, in his Le Vie di Genova, quoting in turn the 18th-century Francesco Maria Accinelli, wrote:
Also contributing to this prosperity was the economic link with the Spanish crown, whose investments needed for the wars in which it was involved in Europe were partly financed by Genoese bankers, who could thus enjoy strong income from interest.
The construction of the "Strada Nuova" was just one of the works carried out in that period, which saw at work architects such as Galeazzo Alessi or sculptors such as Taddeo Carlone. Also from the same period are the construction of the Loggia dei Mercanti and the church of San Pietro in Banchi in the Molo district. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, the long and troubled construction of the basilica of Santissima Annunziata del Vastato also took place, begun in 1520 with the covering of the Vastato stream and finished only in the mid-17th century.
The following century saw the building of a new set of walls, the Mura Nuove, which was not limited like the previous ones to encircling the built-up area because of the need to encompass new areas within it, but provided for the existence of a free space between it and the new route of the walls for mainly defensive purposes. These included the Fronti Basse on the Bisagno River. The construction of the new walls brought the area of the town included within the walls from the 197 hectares of the old walls built until the 16th century to the 903 hectares of the new structure.
In the early 17th century, Via Balbi or Balbi street was also built. Of Via Balbi the first part survives, uphill, on either side of which stand important and majestic palaces, home to several humanities faculties and offices of the University of Genoa and some museums; a second part, which continued toward Piazza Acquaverde, for the use of the slaves, merchants, artisans and intellectuals of the Islamic religion present in the city. A pillar of the original place of worship can be found in the library of the Faculty of Business and Economics, whose location, as of 1996, is the building resulting from the numerous remodeling that has taken place over the centuries on the volumes of the original building.
After its establishment in the 17th century, the Jewish ghetto was also moved for a short time to the vicinity of the port, in the Molo sestiere, and a synagogue was built there in what is now Vico Malatti. From there the ghetto would move, in 1674, to Vico dei Tessitori in an area close to the church of Sant'Agostino and the present-day Piazza delle Erbe, of which no trace remains, however, due to the Allied bombings of World War II, and was then abolished altogether in 1752.
In the sestiere of Portoria, almost on the opposite side of Via Balbi from the city center, at the turn of the century Via Giulia was built, which took up part of the route of the Felice street and the Vico del Vento, and allowed to connect the area of Piazza San Matteo with the Porta degli Archi, located within the circle of the 16th-century walls. Over the following centuries the road would be widened several times and made less steep, until it was replaced by Via XX Settembre at the end of the 19th century.
In 1652, construction began in the area of the little valley of the Carbonara stream, above the church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, of the Albergo dei Poveri. The construction of the building was overseen, on behalf of the republic, by Emanuele Brignole and Doge Oberto Della Torre. Construction had to stop almost immediately, in 1656, because of a plague, and the excavations for the foundations were used to bury the corpses of the sick. The church included in the complex, the construction of which began in April 1657, was dedicated to the Immaculate Virgin, in the hope that she would end the contagion. The first part of the building was inaugurated in 1664, but work to bring it to completion continued, with further extensions, for the next two centuries.
At the end of the seventeenth century, in May 1684 to be precise, Genoa suffered a heavy bombardment by French ships, which caused a great deal of damage in the historic center. Among the buildings that were destroyed and then rebuilt several decades later was also the one where, according to tradition, Christopher Columbus supposedly lived, located in the area of the Piano di Sant'Andrea. What remains of the rebuilt building can be seen in Vico dritto di Ponticello. Initially the city resisted foreign forces and the French ships retreated once they ran out of ammunition, but the following year the Doge Francesco Maria Imperiale Lercari had to go with some senators to Versailles to offer the Republic's apologies to the Sun King: a new phase of decline began for Genoa.
The metamorphoses of the historic center, however, do not stop. Between 1718 and 1724 Domenico Sauli financed the construction of the Carignano bridge, which, overhanging the area of Via Madre di Dio and Via dei Servi, united, for the first time in a direct way, the hill of Carignano with that of Sarzano. In the second half of the 18th century, the Strada Nuova was extended, with the Strada Nuovissima joining the former with the area where the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata del Vastato is located and from there to Via Balbi. As with the construction of the Strada Nuova, that of the Strada Nuovissima also involved the demolition of the previous building fabric and interrupted the various roads and crosses that connected the underlying area of the ancient burgus with Castelletto. To this period also dates the demolition of the church of Santa Brigida, demolished to make way for three buildings known as the "Dufour palaces" after the name of the purchaser's household; before this it was used first as a blacksmith's workshop and later as a spinning mill. Also in the second half of the 18th century, the first system of public lighting was also planned, relating to some of the focal points of the streets in the city center: in 1772 an initial plan was drawn up, which called for the placement of 32 lanterns in as many places, mainly near intersections and squares, but it was not until 25 years later, in 1797, that a first functioning lighting system would be seen to be in place.

The contemporary era and urban expansion of the 19th century

With the end of the republic and the birth of the pro-revolutionary Ligurian Republic in 1797, many religious buildings were suppressed and nationalized, only to be partially returned to ecclesiastical power in the following decades.
Among those that remained in state use and no longer exist is the complex of San Domenico located in the area of today's Piazza De Ferrari : run by the friars of the same name, who in 1431, starting from the initial church of Sant'Egidio, had expanded it, making it the largest religious building in the city and dedicating it to the saint. After the enactment of laws suppressing religious orders it was first used as a warehouse and prison and then demolished during the construction of the Carlo Felice Theater.
Another notable religious complex was the convent of Sant'Andrea, in the area of the same name, a Benedictine monastery that was assigned in 1798 to the Scolopi fathers, and later was deconsecrated and turned into the city jail. Its acquisition and subsequent demolition, to make way for the modernization of the area with the building of the upper part of Via XX Settembre, saw almost 30 years of bargaining between state and municipal institutions and the construction company, and only in 1904 was it finally torn down. The cloister of the convent, saved at the behest of architect and archaeologist Alfredo D'Andrade, was rebuilt in the area in 1922 and can be seen in the area between the Columbus house and the towers of Porta Soprana.
In 1815, with the Congress of Vienna, the Republic of Genoa was not reconstituted, and its territory became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
In the early 19th century Carlo Barabino presented numerous projects for the urban renewal of the city. Among his works is the central Acquasola Park, in the space of the esplanade of the same name, on the land where the fourteenth- and sixteenth-century walls stood.
The areas had been used for several centuries, first as a dumping ground for the construction work on the Via Nuova, then as a mass grave for the dead of the 17th-century plague. Barabino connected the park with that of the villa, belonging to Marquis Gian Carlo Di Negro, carved out on the area where the 16th-century bastion of Luccoli stood, passing through what is now Piazza Luigi Emanuele Corvetto. Part of the park would be demolished a few years later, in 1877, precisely for the creation of the area of Piazza Corvetto and Via Assarotti.
In 1835, after several changes of opinion on how to reshape the area and related plans proposed to the authorities, the Marble Terraces were built in the area of the old port, designed by architect Ignazio Gardella senior, a kind of promenade more than 400 meters long, which allowed to observe the port and the area behind it from an elevated position. Below the promenade the building housed several commercial premises. The terraces partly replaced the Muragliette of the 16th-century walls. Their construction, divided into two sections, lasted 12 years, but their existence was very short, as the needs of the port led to their demolition, which took place in five stages between 1883 and 1886, to make room for the tracks used to transport the goods handled in the piers. The short life of the construction had always left much uncertainty about the structure and the area actually occupied by it, but excavations carried out for the restyling of the Old Port area during the Genoa Expo '92 brought to light some of its remains and traces of the foundations, which helped confirm its actual location. A century would have to pass before new plans for the rehabilitation of the Old Port area would again hypothesize the presence of a promenade along the port arch. The works that led to the demolition of the terraces were part of the great revolution that affected the harbor arch between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, including the arrival of the railroad near the old pier, the construction of canopies on the harbor bridges to shelter waiting goods from the bad weather, and the replacement of these with reinforced concrete structures after a few decades.
In April 1849, a few days after the armistice of Vignale, the people of Genoa, partly because they had not completely abandoned their republican and independence ideas, and partly out of fear of the arrival of the Austrian army as a consequence of the armistice itself, rose up against the Savoy government, driving out the royal guard and carabinieri present in the city. General Alfonso La Marmora, sent by the newly reigning Victor Emmanuel II to quell the uprising, ordered a naval bombardment, which mainly hit the Portoria district and the port, which was followed by a bloody intervention by the bersaglieri, who indulged in destruction and gratuitous violence against the population.
At the turn of the century the Turin-Genoa railway was built, which would reach the western edge of the city with the Piazza Principe station in 1854. In the area where the initial station arose, built in a temporary building, the first permanent passenger building and its extension, there were previously the upper part of Via Balbi, a barracks and part of the 16th-century walls, including the San Michele bastion and the church of the same name.
In 1855, the first Italian Commodity Exchange was established in the Loggia dei Mercanti in Piazza Banchi, established through a decree by the head of the government Cavour, demonstrating the city's continued importance in the economic/mercantile field.
In the 1860s, a reorganization of the city's toponymy was also decided, by Giuseppe Banchero, an operation that led to the cataloguing of some 900 streets. The result of the work was the renaming of 32 streets and the introduction of 86 new toponyms, in some cases relating to newly established streets, in others relating to streets and roads without an official name. Part of the new names introduced referred to domains owned in past centuries by the Republic of Genoa or to battles won by its army.
Slightly more recent than the terraces is the Mazzini Gallery, built in Art Nouveau style in 1873, in the space obtained by the earthworks of part of the Piccapietra hill and the demolition of pre-existing buildings. Since the 1920s, the gallery has hosted the Genoa Book Fair.
In general, in the century between the first decades of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, what was then the city of Genoa underwent a major transformation, which involved the demolition of many of the old buildings, with the building of Via Assarotti and Via Fieschi first and Via XX Settembre and Piazza Dante later.
This expansion also led to the construction of numerous buildings in the area, overlooking the historic center, that corresponds to the Castelletto district and the construction of the two ring roads, which effectively encircle it. Among the main works of this period, in addition to those already mentioned, include the construction of Via Carlo Felice, in 1825, the building of the theater of the same name, between 1826 and 1828, designed by Carlo Barabino, the construction of the first part of the Carlo Alberto carriageway in 1835, of Piazza and Via San Lorenzo, built over a twenty-year period starting in 1835, which also involved the dismantling and reconstruction of the facades of some old buildings in the area, of Via Vittorio Emanuele II with the demolition of the old medieval arcade replaced by a larger one in 19th-century style, of the palace of the Ligustian Academy of Fine Arts, and finally Piazza Corvetto built at the behest of the mayor and Baron Andrea Podestà in the 1880s, where the monument dedicated to Giuseppe Mazzini and the underlying statue dedicated to Victor Emmanuel II were placed.
These operations, often presented as necessary for reasons of hygiene and public utility, as well as for the modernization of the city, were not always welcomed by the population, which protested against the expropriations necessary for the works. Both the city's politicians and the press of the time made the opinions of the builders and the landowning citizens their own from time to time, livening up the political debate of the time. Alfredo D'Andrade, an architect and archaeologist, first director of the Regional Office for the Preservation of Monuments of Piedmont and Liguria and later also representative of the Ministry of Education in the negotiations concerning the sale of the prisons present on the hill of Sant'Andrea, for the subsequent demolition of the same, in his communications with the central government accused the City of Genoa and the private individuals interested in the construction of being driven by speculative motives, rather than by real reasons of hygiene and public utility.
The walls of the Fronti basse in 1889 were also partly demolished and used as a retaining wall for an embankment, destined to host in 1892 the exhibition and events for the fourth centenary of the discovery of America. Their presence, moreover, was perceived as an obstacle to the city's expansion to the east. The same area where Via XX Settembre was built would become the new hub of city life in the 20th century, destining the other areas of the old city center to decades of progressive decay and abandonment. In fact, in the second half of the 19th century, there began to be a gradual abandonment of the old historic center by families living there, who moved either to the new neighborhoods or to the then neighboring municipalities, while maintaining their work activities in the center; it was precisely this emigration that was to be, along with a cholera epidemic that had hit the city, one of the causes of the decline in the municipality's resident population between the first general census of 1861 and the next one in 1871. The abandonment by the households traditionally residing in the area, especially those with belonging to the upper-middle classes, would continue in the following decades, causing the progressive deterioration of the condition of many buildings, left for years without regular maintenance, and transforming large parts of the historic center into residential areas intended for the poorest segments of the population, such as the elderly or immigrant families from southern Italy in search of work.
As mentioned initially, it was during this period of major constructions, both public and private, whose works began to unearth the remains of the oldest city and destroy part of the medieval one, that historians began, albeit amid many difficulties and several missteps, to make the first attempts at non-legendary reconstructions of Genoa's origin and the location of its first settlements.

From the 20th century to the present

In 1907 a Department of Fine Arts, the first of its kind in Italy, was established by the municipality, initially headed by historian and archaeologist Gaetano Poggi, former mayor of Arquata Scrivia between 1890 and 1895 and a member of an earlier commission that was to assess which Genoese buildings and monuments should be subject to special protection because of their historical value. The new council and the Superintendence of Fine Arts, in the following years, would initiate a series of restorations aimed at bringing back to view the characteristic medieval structures of the walls of some of the buildings in the historic center that had been modified, covered, and re-plastered during the Renaissance, with the aim of enhancing the older aspects of the buildings in the area.
The construction of Via XX Settembre and the surrounding areas would end in the 1910s, but this would be only the first of many building interventions that would affect the historic center during that century. In the space obtained from the demolition and silting up of the Fronti Basse on the Bisagno during the 1892 Italian-American Exposition, a space that in the following years had hosted numerous events, between the 1920s and the 1930s Piazza della Vittoria was built to a design by Marcello Piacentini, with its Arco della Vittoria. Also based on Piacentini's design, the Grattacielo dell'Orologio was built in Piazza Dante, inaugurated in 1940, which, with its 108 m distributed over 31 floors, was for a long time the tallest building in the city.
In 1926, by Royal Decree-Law No. 74 of 14 January 1926 and subsequent Royal Decree-Law No. 662 of 15 April 1926, Great Genoa was created, uniting 19 other previously independent municipalities with the then municipality of Genoa.
In 1932 a new master plan, created after a competition of ideas, and called the Master Plan of the central areas of the city, particularly ambitious, provided for several revolutions in the road structure and in the city building style, with the demolition of part of the historic center, deemed necessary for the opening of new roads and the construction of some tunnels. Modified in the following years, only part of the projects envisaged therein would actually see the light of day, but its approach would continue to influence urban planning decisions pertaining to the historic center until the 1970s. In May 1937, the architect and engineer Piero Barbieri published a study in the journal Genova titled Master Plan and Thinning of Medieval Genoa, in which he analyzed the situation of the old city from both a demographic point of view and a transportation point of view, as well as of enhancement of buildings of artistic and historical interest, to be implemented mostly through the gutting of adjacent buildings to create squares that could make them more visible and noticeable. According to Barbieri:
After the armistice of Cassibile and with the establishment of the Italian Social Republic, part of the town's toponymy, including the center, would change, with the disappearance of the names dedicated to the Savoy family: some of these changes would be kept even after the end of the war, while in some cases the names would be further changed.
Partially damaged by Allied bombing in World War II and only partially rebuilt in the immediate postwar period, the historic center was for several decades one of the most degraded areas of Genoa, immortalized as such by songs, books, and films. In the months following the end of the conflict, the very entrance to the area was discouraged to Allied soldiers present in the city, complete with warning signs in English placed at the entrances to the alleys in Sottoripa, precisely because of the dangers that the underworld and widespread prostitution could pose to those who ventured, without knowing it, into the maze of alleys and rubble. The area of the Sarzano convent, one of the most heavily damaged by the bombings, became in the immediate postwar period a refuge for homeless people and immigrants, a situation well depicted in the Oscar-winning film The Walls of Malapaga. In the following decades, a number of building interventions led to the demolition of several parts of the historic center, while new buildings sprang up on the rubble of the bombed palaces, which stand out not only for their modern style but also for their greater height compared to the surrounding buildings.
At the end of the 1960s, the area on Madre di Dio Street was demolished to allow the construction of the Centro dei Liguri executive complex. This is one of the last urbanistic changes provided for in the 1932 master plan to actually be implemented. The Centro dei Liguri complex, built between 1972 and 1980, is behind the clock tower, adjacent to Via Fieschi, and spans the two sides of the eighteenth-century Carigniano Bridge. The area, home to the Region of Liguria and several companies, although frequented during daytime working hours, degraded over time, a deterioration probably also facilitated by a suboptimal integration with the neighboring urban context, so much so that the small children's playground present, officially Giardini Baltimora, is commonly called Giardini di Plastica. Also in the same decade, the construction of the causeway involved the demolition of some of the buildings present along the road that bordered the port, in the area of Via Gramsci, Piazza Caricamento and Piazza Cavour.
The elevated road, a debated work whose possible demolition is speculated several times, running along the port arch of the city center, allows a view of part of the historic center from a panoramic position. Architect Renzo Piano suggested in 2007, in order to take advantage of this scenic route in the event of its demolition, to replace it with an overhead monorail.
In 1976 a new master plan was approved by the municipality, which, among other things, aimed to attempt to rehabilitate the area. From the 1980s onward, partly due to funding related to events such as the 1990 FIFA World Cup, Genoa Expo '92, the 2001 Genoa G8, and Genoa European Capital of Culture in 2004, a renaissance began, leading part of the old city to be one of the most popular tourist spots in Genoa. The subway itself has 5 of its 7 stations located in the old town area. During the various works carried out for the aforementioned events, traces of the old piers and ancient buildings have been found, but these, while bringing new information about the city's past, have almost always been covered over after being studied by the archaeologists of the superintendence and are therefore no longer visible.
In the different itineraries that unravel from Piazza De Ferrari, the heart of the center, in an urbanistically unconventional nucleus, the result of multiple modifications and renovations over the centuries, it is possible to identify the three main guiding lines that trace, with the help of the fortresses and walls built in different centuries between the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the 19th century, the contours of an architecturally "oblique city" rich in unique and valuable elements.
These directions correspond, for the oldest part, to Via San Lorenzo, which descends, crossing numerous streets, alleys and lateral creuze, from the Piano di Sant'Andrea and Piazza De Ferrari to the Marina and the old port. The pedestrianization of the square and the partial pedestrianization of the street, which took place in the early 21st century, make it the ideal pedestrian route for tourist flows between the port and the executive area. For the 16th–17th-century part in Via XXV Aprile, which, with the transit of Piazza delle Fontane Marose and Via Garibaldi, leads to Piazza dell'Annunziata and the university district of Via Balbi. Finally, for the strictly medieval part, in the dense fabric of caruggi that from Piazza Campetto and the Macelli di Soziglia leads to the Church of Santa Maria delle Vigne and the Pre-Molo-Maddalena district.
After the revitalization of the area that occurred with the Genoa Expo '92, the fulcrum around which many of the flows of commerce and tourism currently revolve is provided by the area of the old port, where the aquarium is located, with the back of Piazza Caricamento and the Sottoripa arcades. From there, around the Bank of Saint George at which the city of merchants and dockers of the Compagnia dei caravana was being created, one can easily reach Via Orefici and Piazza Banchi, skirting the old Loggia della Mercanzia, site of the old Commodity Exchange, a building used for numerous events and exhibitions until 2021 and now home to an archaeological site.
As for the eastern part of the historic center, after years of semi-abandonment, the relocation of the faculty of architecture to Stradone Sant'Agostino/Via Mascherona with the rehabilitation of the area of the San Silvestro convent and the opening of numerous restaurants and clubs from the 1990s onward, have led to a rebirth of the area and to an active and busy evening and nightlife, the so-called Genoese "movida," which is, however, often a source of friction with part of the residents, who on several occasions have demanded and obtained from the public administration restrictive measures on the opening hours of clubs. Since 2006, the area has been reached by public transportation, via the Sarzano/Sant'Agostino subway station.
Confirming the recovery of the historic center in recent decades, or at least a substantial part of it, UNESCO declared part of the historic center a World Heritage Site on 13 July 2006.

Landmarks and places of interest

The alleys that develop particularly in the part adjacent to the old port, constitute a kind of intricate casbah architecturally characterized in a way that is not always unified and easily identifiable, with Romanesque-style churches, palaces of classical and neoclassical style and buildings belonging to the Middle Eastern culture, the result of the past that brought the Genoese to operate in the main ports of the Mediterranean Sea and on the fields of the Crusades.

World Heritage Site

A large part of it, enclosed in the section of the so-called Strade Nuove, where the Rolli palaces stand, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 13 July 2006.
With the term Rolli, or more precisely Rolli of the public lodgings of Genoa, from 1576 onwards the lists of palaces that were excellent residences of the noble families who aspired to host, on the basis of a public draw, high personalities in transit for state visits, were indicated. Forty-two of these buildings were included in the World Heritage List.
The Rolli were divided into bussoli, in which the buildings were classified into three types of categories according to their prestige: the first was drawn up in 1576 and the next in 1588, 1599, 1614 and 1664.
On 20 January 2007, a plaque was placed by UNESCO at the beginning of Via Garibaldi with the motivation listing the series of Palazzi dei Rolli among the World Heritage Sites:

Religious architecture

Genoa's historic center is home to the largest and among the best-known churches and buildings of worship in the city. Of the very earliest churches that denoted the presence of Christian groups in the city virtually nothing remains, having been destroyed from time to time, incorporated into newer churches or heavily renovated over the centuries to the point of making the original scheme unrecognizable. The oldest churches visible today date from roughly the beginning of the late medieval period.
Symbols of Genoese religious power, but also of the noblest families who in most cases contributed to the establishment of many places of worship in the form of aristocratic chapels, the churches of the historic center are part of the history of Genoa and, from an architectural and touristic point of view, are a rallying point and attraction for the tourist-religious activity of the Ligurian capital.
As written earlier, with the establishment of the pro-Napoleonic Ligurian Republic following the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, many religious buildings were expropriated. After the annexation of the Republic to the Kingdom of Sardinia, decided during the Congress of Vienna, some of these buildings remained state-owned while others were reassigned to the Catholic Church, but not always to the same religious orders that previously resided there. Major construction works, which took place in the city center from the early 19th century onward, then led to the demolition of several churches and monasteries, of which there are no visible traces left.
As for the formerly existing Islamic places of worship in the dock area, these were abandoned and used for other purposes at the end of the 18th century, when, in the wake of the ideals of the French Revolution, the newly formed Ligurian Republic abolished slavery, freeing the Muslim prisoners there. Only a few remnants remain, incorporated into the building that houses the Faculty of Economics.
The Jewish community had several places of worship, both in the older city, and after the arrival of Sephardic Jews from Spain in the “ghetto” district, and later in the Pier district, which no longer exist. In 1935 the present synagogue was built, located in a side street of Via Assarotti, which replaced the Molo one.
From west to east, within the historic center area can be identified:

Building	Coordinates	Historical notes
Church and Commenda of San Giovanni di Prè		Located on Prè Street, it is the best-known and best-preserved Genoese Romanesque-style building in the historic center. Founded in 1180 by the Knights Hospitaller, the body of the building consists of two overlapping churches and the Commenda.
Church of St. Sixtus		Located on the seaward side of the southwestern section of the Prè district, it is the 19th-century neoclassical rebuilding of a pre-existing Romanesque structure dating from the 11th century.
St. Anthony's Abbey		Demolished in 1881, it was located in lower Vico di Sant'Antonio; a portal dated 1365 remains visible of the earlier building.
Church of San Marco al Molo		Located in the Molo district, the church was erected in the second half of the 12th century. Between the end of the 16th century and the first decades of the 18th it underwent several expansions and alterations that gave it a Baroque style. On the left side of the church is walled a plaque with bas-relief, depicting the lion of St. Mark, which was taken from the city of Pula in 1380, when the Genoese sacked it.
Church of Santa Fede		Located in Metelino Square, the existing building is a 17th-century reconstruction of an existing 11th-century Romanesque temple. The former Romanesque church is, since 2007, the seat of the Municipio I Centro Est. From the church's name the nearby Porta dei Vacca was also called Porta di Santa Fede.
Church of San Marcellino		Already known in 1023 and an aristocratic church of the Cybo family, it is an 18th-century reconstruction. Giovanni Battista Cybo, who ascended to the papal throne in 1484 as Pope Innocent VIII, was baptized here.
Sanctuary of Nostra Signora delle Grazie al Molo		Located in Piazza delle Grazie, it is the rebuilding of an earlier church carried out in the 17th century. The original Romanesque-style bell tower and a crypt dating back to the 11th century are present.
Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata del Vastato		Built in several stages, between the early 16th and mid-17th centuries, in an area formerly occupied by a community of Humiliati Friars, who had built a church there in the 13th century dedicated to Santa Marta del Prato.
Oratory of San Giacomo della Marina		Erected in the 16th century on the walls of the city of Genoa, in an area that was touched by the sea until the end of the 19th century. It was restored in the second half of the 20th century.
Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian		Also called di San Cosimo, its foundation is dated 1049.
Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Agnes		Located in the Carmine district of the same name, it was erected in the 13th century by Carmelite monks who came in the retinue of Louis IX of France, and enlarged several times in the following centuries. It underwent restoration work in the 1930s and early 21st century.
Church of San Torpete		A noble church of the Cattaneo family, it was rebuilt after 1730. The entrance to the church is located in Piazza San Giorgio, adjacent to the entrance to the church of San Giorgio.
Church of St. George		Mentioned in 904, it is a 17th-century reconstruction. The entrance to the church is located in St. George's Square, adjacent to that of the church of St. Torpete.
Church of San Pancrazio		A noble church of the Pallavicini family, it was rebuilt, in the square of the same name, after the French naval bombardment of 1684.
Church of Santa Maria di Castello		Built in the first quarter of the 12th century.
Church of San Pietro in Banchi		Built between 1572 and 1585 in the square of the same name on the remains of the church of San Pietro della Porta, an ancient church owned by the abbey of San Colombano of Bobbio, erected in the 9th century and destroyed by fire in 1398.
Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie la Nuova		With the attached convent of the Lateran canonesses, it dates from the 16th century. It is home to the Center for Paganinian Studies.
Basilica of San Siro		Rebuilt in its present form in 1585, until the 9th century, although located in the burgus outside the walls, it had been the cathedral of Genoa, only to be replaced by the more central and protected San Lorenzo.
Church of San Luca		Existing since the end of the 12th century, it was the aristocratic parish of the Spinola and Grimaldi families. It was rebuilt between 1626 and 1650.
Church of the Holy Name of Mary and Guardian Angels		Built by the Scolopian Fathers at the turn of the mid-18th century on the area occupied by a pre-existing building.
Oratory of Saints Peter and Paul		Built in 1772, in the early 20th century it was requisitioned and used from 1918 as a paper depot by the newspaper Il Secolo XIX; it is home to some associations.
Cathedral of St. Lawrence		Located in the square of the street of the same name its construction began in the 12th century for a final phase in the 14th century. Inside is preserved the Museum of the Treasure of the Cathedral of St. Lawrence.
Church of San Donato		Built in the early 12th century.
Church of San Salvatore		Located in Sarzano Square, the former church was founded in 1141 but completely rebuilt in 1653. Restored, especially after considerable damage suffered in the bombing of World War II, it houses the lecture hall of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Genoa.
Oratory of St. Anthony Abbot		Overlooking the sea and home to a historic “casaccia,” it was reopened for religious worship in 1816 and restored in 1828.
Church of St. Augustine		Founded by the Augustinians in 1260 in Gothic style, since 1995 it has been converted into an auditorium with a capacity of 750 seats.
Church of St. Matthew		Founded in 1125 as an aristocratic chapel of the Doria family, the current Gothic style dates back to the 1278 revival.
Church of Jesus and Saints Ambrose and Andrew		Located in Matteotti Square near the Doge's Palace, today's church is a reconstruction from 1589. The facade was completely redone in the second half of the 19th century.
Church of Santa Maria Maddalena		Fifteenth-seventeenth-century reconstruction of a pre-existing medieval building.
Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta		Established as the aristocratic church of the Sauli family, it is one of Galeazzo Alessi's best-known Genoese works. Its construction began in 1552 and continued until the beginning of the 1600s, but the church was modified several times in the following centuries.
Church of the Holy Cross and St. Camillus de Lellis		Built in the 17th century next to the no longer existing Pammatone Hospital to house the congregation of Camillian Fathers who worked there, it survived the Allied bombings that destroyed the hospital and almost all other surrounding buildings
Church of the Santissima Annunziata di Portoria		Located near the Acquasola esplanade and also closely connected with the activity of the Pammatone hospital, it was built with the adjoining convent, starting in 1488 by the Friars Minor, but later it was alternated with Capuchins. Jesuits, Camillians, the “reformed priests of Tortona” and Augustinians. World War II bombings destroyed the convent, but fortunately spared the church. While retaining the dedication to the Holy Annunciation, the church since 1927 has been officially declared the “Sanctuary of St. Catherine,” and the body of the saint is preserved inside.

The votive shrines and portals

One of the typical features of Genoa's historic center is the large number of votive shrines present, not all of which are in a good state of preservation or easily visible, although a challenging restoration and cataloguing project has been underway in recent decades. The tradition originated in the late Middle Ages and continued for several centuries until the early 20th century, peaking in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Hundreds of aedicules are believed to have been built in the historic center over time, many of them dedicated to Our Lady, whether by nobles, merchants and artisans, confraternities or ordinary citizens. The depictions present were then often adorned with votive offerings and candles.
Another feature are the portals of palaces, finely decorated with sculptures, statues and frescoes. The origin of the spread of this type of portals is to be found in the 15th century, when the noble families who owned the palaces in the area, in order to cope with the shortage of space for new living areas or to be used as stores, decided to reuse the courtyards and porticos of the same, changing the distribution of space and obtaining new rooms and loggias overlapping them.
The redefined palaces thus needed new entrances, more sumptuous than the previous ones, the design and construction of which were entrusted to sculptors and master masons, often from outside the city, mainly from Lombardy or Tuscany. The themes depicted, besides religious ones, often took up Greek mythology or were tributes to the family that owned the palace.
In the decades-long deterioration that accompanied the downtown area, many of the statues contained in the aedicules and many of the decorations on the portals deteriorated severely or were subject to theft and vandalism.

Genoa's growth and population trends in the old city

Genoa's population at the beginning of the 16th century is estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000, depending on different estimates, included almost entirely in the sestieri of Molo, Maddalena, Prè and Portoria.
An 1834 text, Viaggio nella Liguria marittima, written by Davide Bertolotti, gives a table in which he summarizes data dating from about 1530, collected by “il Giustiniano”, and based on these he tries to obtain an estimate of the population in the first decades of the 16th century. According to Giustiniani's data reported and summed up by Bertolotti, there were 6298 houses in Genoa in the circle included within the sixteenth-century walls, to which must be added more than 300 houses in the area that would be incorporated into the seventeenth-century Mura Nuove. The humblest houses, believed to be the majority, would have had 4, 5 or 6 fuochi : this leads the nineteenth-century writer to estimate the population of Genoa to be about 132,000, a figure higher than the values generally considered correct for that period by present-day historians.
Estimates and studies based on various documents reported by the publications of the Municipality's Statistical Organizational Unit, suggest a population of nearly 50,000 in the second half of the 16th century, which would grow until of the plague of 1656, reaching about 90,000 residents, only to collapse because of it to about 40,000. The expansion of the city in the meantime would also incorporate into it the sestieri of San Vincenzo and San Teodoro.
From the mid-sixteenth century onward, after the plague, the population would increase again, reaching about 100,000 in the 1830s, to exceed 130,000 one forty years later. The aforementioned Dizionario geografico storico statistico commerciale degli Stati di S.M. il Re di Sardegna by Goffredo Casalis, reporting data for 1938, estimated the city's population, military and port personnel included, at 115,257. The author also specifies that there were 181 Jews who “not being able to own any real estate, engaged in maritime trade with good success,” and had a synagogue in the area of the Malapaga walls ; in addition to these, the author reports, there were also several Protestants, 296 Swiss and 65 Anglicans, and these groups "were mostly engaged in commerce, and figured among the bankers, and the richest shopkeepers" and had a church in the area of the Crosa del Diavolo. Casalis also specifies that Genoa usually had an average number of outsiders estimated at about 2,800, to which were added the inhabitants of nearby areas who came to the city during daylight hours for business or work.
As far as the period between the 18th and 19th centuries is concerned, in 1797, by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Republic of Genoa ended its existence and with it the de facto independence of the city. The subsequent Ligurian Republic was closely dependent on the French, alongside whom it fought several wars that led to its besieging by the Austrians and British in 1800, a siege that caused nearly 10,000 deaths due to malnutrition and disease. The Ligurian Republic itself would be annexed to the French Empire in 1805, and with the fall of the French Empire in 1814, after a few months as the Genoese Republic, it would then be annexed to the Savoy Kingdom of Sardinia.
The population census of 1861 reported the existence of 5409 houses, 185 of which were empty, a number of households amounting to 28931, with a population within the course of the walls of 139,993, of whom, however, only 127,735 actually resided in Genoa. In the census a decade later, in 1871, the de facto population rises to 130,269, while the de jure population falls to 125,606. The bureau analyzing the data from the 1871 census justified this decline by changes in the unstable population, by the cholera epidemic that had hit the city between 1866 and 1867, and by the fact that many citizens had moved to the more livable and inexpensive neighboring towns.
In 1874 Genoa grew out of its initial 6 sestieri and annexed, in its expansion to the east and along the Bisagno valley, precisely these municipalities: Marassi, San Francesco and San Martino d'Albaro, San Fruttuoso, and Staglieno, as well as that of the Foce.
After the unification of the Kingdom of Italy, the population in the historic areas of downtown Genoa had the following trend, noted in the various censuses over the years:

Sestiere	1861	1871	1881	1901	1911	1921	1931	1936	1951	1961	1971	1981	1991	2001
Maddalena	11891	12341	11484	12511	11402	11805	10666	11431	11629	10130	7437	6485	5598	4924
Molo	22717	22837	21929	24430	24474	25112	23635	24668	22947	19164	13763	11437	9043	7667
Portoria	35877	38774	39912	40260	39251	38373	34667	35007	25967	20021	14236	11311	9398	9012
Prè	20895	18497	17303	17261	17770	18251	17290	18676	17233	13871	9905	9013	7352	6862
San Teodoro	10427	11368	14539	21779	26316	33892	37439	37889	39533	53595	62630	59841	51955	45294
San Vincenzo	21963	27019	30146	39654	46634	51830	53439	57988	60134	56915	52343	46412	39947	36387
Inner harbor area	4216	–	549	44	709	419	1518	–	1361	760	310	301	147	215
Total	127986	130836	135862	155939	166556	179682	178654	185659	178804	174456	160624	144800	123440	110361
Prè-Molo-Maddalena	55503	53675	50716	54202	53646	55168	51591	54775	51809	43165	31105	26935	21993	19453

As also pointed out in the Demographic Atlas published by the municipality, the ancient area of the historic center, corresponding to the Prè-Molo-Maddalena sestieri, shows a singular demographic evolution with respect to the rest of Genoa: albeit with some fluctuations between one census and the next one, the population appears to have slightly decreased between the first one in 1861 and the one almost a century later in 1951, to then have its own and true collapse between the 1961 and 1971 census, during the period when instead the city as a whole reached its population peak, and then continued to decline in the censuses of the following decades. At the 2001 census, the population in the Prè-Molo-Maddalena area, with its 19,453 residents, corresponds to about 3.19 percent of the total city population, while considering all the sestieri it comes to about 18.08 percent. However, for several decades there has been a substantial presence of irregular immigrants in the area, which, in fact, makes the actual population higher than recorded by statistics.
Regarding the origin of official residents, gender and average age, the data provided by the municipality of Genoa for 31 December 2007, are as follows:

Urban unit	Average age	Males	Females
Prè	42,0	4380	3447
Maddalena	42,6	2922	2866
Molo	43,9	4785	4629
San Vincenzo	49,2	2460	2939
Carignano	46,4	3954	4339
San Teodoro	47,8	5034	5649