Genoa Culture

Seven centuries of being a republic

Genoa governed itself from the eleventh century to 1797, and the habits show. The city is mercantile, private and reserved; it has a reputation across Italy for thrift that it confirms with some enjoyment; and it is markedly less interested in charming visitors than Florence or Venice. Where Venice performed its wealth in public, Genoa kept it behind doors — which is literally what the Palazzi dei Rolli are.

Those palaces are the clearest expression of the city's character. They were private houses entered on an official roll, and the republic assigned visiting dignitaries to them by lot: hospitality as a legal duty of the rich rather than a state expense. The result is a UNESCO World Heritage Site consisting largely of other people's homes, which is still the case — 42 inscribed palaces of which many remain privately owned.

The caruggi are housing

The historic centre is among the largest and most densely populated in Europe, and it is a network of alleys — caruggi — some barely wide enough for two people, under buildings six storeys tall. It is not a heritage quarter and should not be read as one: it is where a great many Genoese live, and its noise, washing lines and crowdedness are domestic rather than touristic. Walking it in daylight without a plan is the single best thing to do in the city.

A cuisine built on not having any land

Liguria is mountains meeting sea with almost no farmland, and its cooking is a direct response — herbs, flour, oil, vegetables and small fish, with very little meat.

• Pesto genovese — basil, pine nuts, pecorino and Parmesan, oil and garlic, served with trofie or trenette and traditionally with potato and green beans in the pasta water.
• Focaccia genovese — dimpled, salty and oily, eaten at any hour including breakfast, and sold by weight.
• Farinata — chickpea-flour batter baked in wide copper pans, cut in slices.
• Anchovies, stoccafisso and cappon magro — the sea's cheap protein, treated with real seriousness.

The sciamadde, the old fried-food and savoury-pie shops in the alleys, are where most of this is actually sold.

Emigration, and a name known across the Americas

For decades around the turn of the twentieth century Genoa was the port millions of Italians left Europe from. That history is why the city's name carries weight across the Americas, and the Porto Antico now holds a museum devoted to it. It also explains something about the city's manner: Genoa has always been a place people moved through.

Christopher Columbus, and 1992

Christopher Columbus was born here around 1451 and sailed for Spain. The fifth centenary of his first voyage, in 1992, produced the Expo that rebuilt the derelict harbour into the public Porto Antico to Renzo Piano's plan — the single most consequential thing to happen to the modern city, and the reason its waterfront is walkable at all.