How Genoa was built and evolved over time

Nowhere to build, so upward and inward

Genoa's form is dictated by having almost no flat ground: the Apennines meet the sea with no coastal plain, so the city occupies a strip about 30 kilometres long and 10 deep. Every structural decision follows. The medieval centre is one of the densest in Europe because the buildable land filled early and the only direction left was up — six and seven storeys over alleys barely shoulder-width, built in stone and slate, with the upper floors overhanging to gain space.

The caruggi as a system

The caruggi are not an accident of charm but an efficient response to the constraint. Narrow alleys shade themselves, resist wind off the sea, and waste no land on carriageways in a city that had none to waste. The cost is permanent twilight at ground level and a street network dense enough to disorient anybody, which is precisely why it has survived: it was never worth demolishing and never easy to drive through.

The Palazzi dei Rolli, and the Strade Nuove

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the aristocracy did what the old town could not accommodate: it built new. Via Garibaldi, Via Cairoli and Via Balbi were laid out as planned streets of palaces above the medieval warren, and they are the reason Genoa has a World Heritage Site. UNESCO inscribed them in 2006 under criteria (ii) and (iv) as Le Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli.

The architectural innovation was internal. Built on a slope, these palaces could not be organised around a flat courtyard, so they use a sequence rising through the building — entrance hall, stair, courtyard, garden, each a level above the last and visible through from the street. Standing at the door of one and looking straight through to a garden two storeys up is the experience the inscription is really about, and it is available from the pavement even where the palace is closed.

Vertical transport as infrastructure

A city on this gradient needs machinery. Genoa's public network includes funiculars and public lifts alongside buses and a small metro of eight stations over 7.1 km, all run by AMT, and the Zecca–Righi and Sant'Anna funiculars connect directly to metro stations. These are ordinary transport, not attractions — the equivalent of a bus route in a city with no flat streets.

The walls, and the ridge

Because the city could be attacked from the heights behind it, Genoa built fortifications along the Apennine crest rather than around the town — an enormous circuit of walls and detached forts following the ridgeline. They are among the longest city walls in Europe and they are now a walking route, which is the easiest way to grasp how narrow the inhabited strip actually is.

1992, and getting the water back

Twentieth-century industry and an elevated motorway along the waterfront cut the old town off from the harbour entirely. The Expo of 1992, marking the fifth centenary of Christopher Columbus's first voyage, reversed that: Renzo Piano's plan turned the derelict docks into the public Porto Antico, with the Aquarium as its anchor and a cetacean pavilion of his added in 2013. It is the most important piece of modern building in Genoa and the reason the city has a public waterfront.