Bed and breakfast accommodation in Genoa Monasteries

Italy’s main maritime city and the birthplace of the country’s industrial revolution, Genoa is a port city par excellence, its harbours and docks the focal point. This area had a major facelift in 1992, when superstar architect Renzo Piano, a native Genoan, revamped the entire area. Behind the port, the city sprawls up the hills and along the coast, a confusing urban landscape whose different levels are linked by public elevators and rack railways. Superb 16th-century High Renaissance palaces line the Via Garibaldi and Via Balbi, and Genoa has important galleries and museums housed in Palazzo Spinola and Palazzo Bianco. Piazza Matteotti is the heart of the medieval city, dominated by the striped Palazzo Ducale, built in the 15th – 16th centuries. From here, a revitalised warren of alleyways leads to the harbour, home to the Acquario, one of Europe’s largest, built to commemorate Columbus’s discovery of the New World.

As in so many port cities, religious life took a back step in Genoa, the independent republic being more occupied in medieval times with trade and its ongoing struggles with other Mediterranean maritime powers. Its republican era was long; established in 1005, its autonomy lasted until 1798. 

Genoa’s patron saints were first, St Lawrence, and then St George, and the cathedral, built in the early 13th century, is still dedicated to the former. A superb black-and-white striped façade fronts the building, which is said to contain the ashes of St John the Baptist, brought to Genoa after the First Crusade. This was partially funded by loans from Genoese bankers, who were less happy to support their own mariner, Christopher Columbus, who had to go to Spain to get funding for his voyages. Genoese wealth paid for some opulent churches throughout the city; Santa Maria di Castello, San Giorgio and the wonderfully High Baroque Gesù are all worth a visit.