click highlighted hovered text for more info, see

Genova UNESCO world heritage sites

Genova north

Royal Palace Museum at Via Balbi, 10
Construction of the present structure began in 1618 for the Balbi family. From 1643-1655, work renewed under the direction of the architects Pier Francesco Cantone and Michele Moncino. In 1677, the Palace was sold to the Durazzo Family, who enlarged the Palace under the designs of Carlo Fontana.

Balbi Piovera Raggio Palace at Via Balbi, 6
Last of the buildings on Via Balbi, it was erected between 1657 and 1665 on the initiative of Francesco Maria Balbi, a leading figure in the family (after Stefano), engaged in numerous financial and political activities including the appointment of feudal lord of the Alessandria village of Piovera , who commissioned the architect Pietro Antonio Corradi (1613-1683) to the project; however, the building is better known as the residence of his nephew Costantino Balbi.

Balbi-Senarega Palace at Via Balbi, 4
Baroque art is distinguished above all from the decorations of the second floor Nobile and from the garden of the building characterized by the wide Baroque spatiality and the bright colonnades.

Durazzo Pallavicini Palace at Via Balbi, 1
The visitor finds himself immersed in art, nature and spirituality: lakes, caves, esoteric symbolism, splendid architecture and the largest and oldest historical camelieto in Italy.

Gio.Francesco Balbi Palace at Via Balbi, 2
A former residence of the Balbi family, it was enlarged in the 16th century by Gio. Francesco, governor of the Republic of Genoa , who transformed the old nucleus with the annexation of some adjacent buildings. Still present in the rollo of 1664 in the name of Balbi, it arrives by inheritance to the Cattaneo della Volta family who, during the eighteenth century, commissioned the architect Gregorio Petondi with stucco decorations on the and interior.

Belimbau Palace at Piazza della Nunziata, 2
Founded by Nicolo Lomellini, who expanded the garden in 1567, there is news of its reconstruction in the following century. It is indicated among the most superb Palaces of 1797 in the name of Giuseppe Lomellini, who shortly thereafter gave it to the Marquis Giacomo Durazzo. In the nineteenth century there were numerous changes of ownership between the Durazzo and De Mari families.

Nicolo Lomellini Palace at Piazza della Nunziata, 5
The frescoes that decorate the entrance vestibule, which gives access to the monumental staircase, are dedicated to the life of Cleopatra . At the center of the vault, the main panel depicts the queen of Egypt sailing in the waters of the Cnidus river , on the grandiose vessel with golden stern and silver oars, as narrated by Plutarchin his Lives . All around, within fake painted architectures are enclosed fanciful grotesque decorations in a late Mannerist style, interspersed with portraits of full-figure leaders.

Giacomo Lomellini Palace at Largo della Zecca, 2
Inside, you can see an admired cycle of frescoes by Domenico Fiasella illustrating the Stories of Esther: the importance of the expressive quality is accompanied by a profound political allusion that the client intended to express by choosing it among the biblical themes.

Stefano Lomellini Palace at Largo della Zecca, 1
The Palace of Stefano Lomellini was included in the rolli of Genoa from 1588 to 1664 ; it was however only the nucleus of the present building, which was restructured and enlarged by the architect Gregorio Petondi in 1776 for Gian Tommaso Balbi.

Bartolomeo Lomellini Palace at Largo della Zecca, 4
The construction work lasted between 1566 and 1570 by Bartolomeo, brother of Nicolosio Lomellino of Strada Nuova (today Palazzo Podestà ) and grandson of purchase of Adamo Centurione. Registered in the Rolli of Genoa from 1588 to 1664 , it will remain with the Lomellini family until 1757 , then passing through the female line to the Rostan Reggio, until in 1892 it was sold to the Ray.

Genova west

Cosma Centurione Palace at Via Lomellini 8
Also known as the Palazzo Durazzo Pallavicini or Palazzo di Gerolamo III Pallavicino, from the name of its successive owners, due to its architecture and the frescoes preserved inside, it is an outstanding example of Genoese Baroque.

Giorgio Centurione Palace at Via Lomellini, 5
There is little information about the building, which was built at the end of the 16th century probably by the architect Gaspare Corte on behalf of Giorgio Centurione, subsequently doge of the Republic of Genoa in 1621-1622. The daughter of Giorgio Centurione, Virginia (1587-1651), then married to Gaspare Grimaldi Bracelli, founder of the order of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Refuge in Monte Calvario , was sanctified by Pope John Paul II in 2003. Known as Santa Virginia Centurione In the building on Via Lomellini, Bracelli began assisting poor girls, then continued to the convent of Monte Calvario, while subsequently the congregation of women religious she founded under the protection of Emanuele Brignole , founder of the Grande Albergo dei Poveri , took the name of "brignoline".

Gio Battista Centurione Palace at Via del Campo, 1
It preserves the 17th century published in the Rubensian edition. On the portal there is a cartouche with the inscription "SIC NOS NON NOBIS". The vaulted staircase is also original, with "infrascato" plaster on the walls, which continues up to the second noble floor.

Cipriano Pallavicini Palace at Piazza Fossatello, 2
In the current building, from the fifteenth century, a building for residential use was built, composed, according to medieval tradition, by two buildings side by side with water cisterns and shops. The building was located at a crossroads that in 1539 it is desired to transform into a square by demolishing the surrounding huts, at that time Cipriano Pallavicini, (elected archbishop of Genoa in 1567 ) with his brothers Antoniotto and Gerolamo, entrusted to a remaining author anonymous the design of a new with a more modern facade and a design similar to the works of Bramante.

Gio Battista Grimaldi Palace at Vico San Luca, 4
The current conformation of the building derives from the recast of pre-existing medieval buildings, whose arcades on the ground floor were closed during the XVI century; pre-existing, moreover, still legible on the back, where there is the presence of a fifteenth-century portal in black stone, and on the front of the building, where there are some Corinthian order columns.

Spinola National Gallery at Piazza di Pellicceria, 1
The building has characteristics typical of late 16th-century Genoese Palaces, having an entrance hall and an inner courtyard. The interior is richly decorated with many frescoes, including works by Lazzaro Tavarone and Lorenzo De Ferrari. The Palace also had an extensive art collection, including paintings by Luca Cambiasi, Bernardo Castello and Bernardo Strozzi.

Gio Carlo Brignole Palace at Piazza della Meridiana, 2
In the first phase, the building, designed by the "chief of opera" Pietro Antonio Corradi , had an entrance on vico di Santa Maria degli Angeli, while the present square was occupied by gardens. With the opening of Strada Nuovissima ( 1778 - 1786 , now Via Cairoli) the entrance is moved to its current position and decorated with the two telamons of Filippo Parodi in 1671 which originally closed Strada Nuova at the entrance to the Brignole Garden.

Genova east

White Palace at Via Garibaldi, 11
The new owners, between 1714 and 1716, carried out a decisive restoration of the building, adapting it to the tastes of the age. It subsequently earned the name White for the clear color of its exterior decoration. In 1899, Maria Brignole Sale, the Duchess of Galliera and the last member of the family, divested the Palace to become municipal property and thus destined it to become a public gallery.

Red Palace at Via Garibaldi, 18
Built in 1675, Palazzo Rosso was not one of the 163 Palazzi dei Rolli of Genoa, the selected private residences where the notable guests of the Republic of Genoa were hosted during State visits, as the last of such list was completed in 1664, ten years before the construction of the Palace. As a distinguished 17th-century Palace in Strada Nuova, however, on 13 luglio del 2006 it was included in the list of 42 Palaces which now form the UNESCO World Heritage Site Genoa: Le Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli.

Doria Tursi Palace at Via Garibaldi, 9
It is the most majestic building on the street, the only one built on three plots of land, with two large gardens framing the central body. The large loggias overlooking the street were added in 1597, when the palace became the property of Giovanni Andrea Doria, who acquired it for his younger son Carlo, duke of Tursi, to whom the present name is due.

Baldassarre Lomellini Palace at Via Garibaldi, 12
It was built starting from 1562 for Baldassarre Lomellini, a banker with King Philip II of Spain , on a project by Giovanni Ponzello , "chamber architect" of Genoa and designer of Palazzo Tursi , belonging to Niccolò Grimaldi, Baldassarre's son-in-law. Andrea Semino frescoed the salons with Roman stories. Only the white marble portal of Taddeo Carlone survives from the original 16th century facade, bearing the inscription "venturi non immemor aevi". Its original appearance is evidenced by the engravings of the Rubens of 1622

Podesta Palace at Via Garibaldi, 7
The fassade, designed by the Bergamasco, is enlivened by a rich stucco decoration, with winged female herms, to support the string course frame on the ground floor; ribbons and drapes holding up, on the first floor, arms trophies; wreaths and masks crowning the windows, with classical figures in oval medallions, per second. The old stucco decoration, applied for the first time in modern times by Raphael in the Vatican Lodges and prematurely imported to Genoa by his pupil Perin del Vaga in the decoration of the villa of the Prince , unfolds here for the first time on a large scale covering the whole prospectus. Its execution is attributed to the urbanite Marcello Sparzo;

Cattaneo Adorno Palace at Via Garibaldi, 8 - 10
The attribution of two distinct house numbers is due to the fact that the palace, although it consists of a single building, is made up of two distinct and symmetrical dwellings, a feature that makes it unique among the palaces of Strada Nuova.

Andrea and Gio Batta Spinola Palace at Via Garibaldi, 6
Up to recently, Giovan Battista Castello was believed to be the main architect. In 1968, however, Bernardino Cantone was documented as chief architect and building master of the Palace. Today its construction is primarily attributed to Cantone, while the fireplace on the piano nobile and the courtyard remain attributed to Castello. The piano nobile features the fresco Legate of Obertus Spinola to Frederik I Barbarossa by Andrea Semino and frescoes by Luca Cambiasi.

Angelo Giovanni Spinola Palace at Via Garibaldi, 5
The fassade of the Palace is decorated with frescoes executed by the Calvi brothers, possibly together with Lazzaro Tavarone. The frescoes depict members of the House of Spinola dressed as Roman condottieri. A staircase decorated by grotesque frescoes leads to the upper floor, decorated with frescoes by Andrea Semino, Bernardo Castello and Lazzaro Tavarone. A fresco attributed to Semino shows the building in its original state, as viewed from a mountain.

Carrega-Cataldi Palace at Via Garibaldi, 4
The interior decoration reflects the two phases of the construction: In particular, the two vestibules of the ground floor and the noble floor, completely covered by late Renaissance decoration, have survived intact. Here it is evident the inspiration for the Roman models and in particular the Raphaelesque ones by the Castle, author of the project and of the frescoes enclosed in the stuccos and the grotesques . On the ground floor frames with delicate modulation in white stucco run among imaginative and minute grotesque decorations and wider frescoes depicting the full-figure deities of Olympus, while in the central octagons are represented Juno and Leda . On the side walls and on the vault of the vestibule of the noble floor , the brighter color scheme of the decorations becomes brighter. They too are entirely covered, thanks to the intervention of the Bergamasco, by stuccoes and grotesques and frescoed panels representing Apollo Citaredo with the Muses and musician figures . Here too the unity of the architecture and decoration project is evident.

Parodi Palace at Via Garibaldi, 3
It was built from 1571 by Franco Lercari, a wealthy banker, who also held the position of governor of the Genoese Republic in the 1770s. In 1845, another banker, Bartolomeo Parodi, bought the property; his family still owns it.

Pantaleo Spinola Palace at Via Garibaldi, 2
The “signature” of the Bergamasco family, in full Mannerist observance, can be seen in the very fine design of the portal with female herms, executed by Giacomo Ponzello and Pompeo Bianchi (1560), and in the façade, with its imaginative quadrature in fresco and stucco, similar to that of the Imperiale palace in Campetto (1555-1560) and the Lomellini palace in Strada Nuova (1563). Another obvious reference is the triforium, a curtain of three arches on the ground floor and a transparent diaphragm between the atrium and the staircase, identical to the solution chosen for the Tobia Pallavicini palace in Strada Nuova (1558), where the scenographic adjective is given by two diverging ramps. The interior is richly frescoed from the atrium to the living rooms on the second floor.

Pallavicini Palace-Cambiaso at Via Garibaldi, 1
The very elegant prospectus of the building has a gray stone ashlar finish that brings out the white marble of the skirting, in which an eighteenth-century votive shrine fits well. The portal is decorated with a frieze in bucranian style mannerist.

Giacomo Spinola Palace at Piazza delle Fontane Marose, 6
Built for Giacomo Spinola between 1445 and 1459 on lots already built, it is present in all the rolls ; between the years 1576 and 1595 it belongs to Antonio Spinola Marmari but reaches the maximum position in 1614 with Giovanni Battista Spinola of Tomaso , scholar and doge of the Republic of Genoa in 1613 - 1615.

Ayrolo Agostino Palace at Piazza delle Fontane Marose, 3-4
The palazzo, which overlooks piazza Fontane Marose with an unusually extended façade featuring no fewer than fourteen rows of windows and with twin doorways, owes its origin to the residence erected in 1560-1562 for Francesco de Ugarte, Spanish Ambassador to the Republic of Genoa.

Paolo Battista e Niccolo Interiano Palace at Piazza delle Fontane Marose, 2
It has a faintly legible façade with architectural squaring of niches and figures (allegories of Prudence , Temperance , Justice and Fortress and the cardinal virtues performed by the Mannerist painters Lazzaro and Benedetto Calvi between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ), as well as on the rear elevation . The portal, in alternating stone and marble drafts, with putti and vases, is surmounted by the coat of arms of the Pallavicino family.

Genova south

Marini - Croce Palace at Piazza De Marini, 1
Built in the second half of the 16th century by the De Marini family on the square opened in the first half of the century, the building was built on medieval remains belonging to the same noble "hotel". Around the inner courtyard, once communicating with the square through a blind alley surmounted by an arch that is still visible today, the monumental staircase winds through three orders of loggias.

Emanuele Filiberto Di Negro Palace at Via Al Ponte Reale, 2
The fassades, richly decorated with stuccos, can be admired easily, a rare case in Genoa, from wide perspectives, to the external grandeur are answered by atrium and nymphaeum of the open courtyard and stucco staircase.

Stefano De Mari Palace at Via San Luca, 5
The monumental, late 16th century doorway leads into a hallway which was restructured in the 19th century. The severe walls of the fassade bearing frescoed quadratura, are counterbalanced by the luminosity of the internal courtyard around which an arcaded, partly clodThe monumental late 15th century portal leads to a atrium renovated in the 19th century that holds a plaque commemorating an episode of the Resistance. The narrow façades are frescoed in quadrature. They are compensated for by the brightness of the inner courtyard. A porticoed staircase, partly filled in, runs above the courtyard.ed off stairway climbs.

Ambrogio Di Negro Palace at Via San Luca, 2
The vaulted staircase, which rises up to the second floor, overlooks a loggia on three sides of the inner courtyard; relevant portals in white marble and those in black stone of the great hall on the first noble floor , with Latin sentences reminiscent of the humanism of Ambrogio Di Negro. The main floor houses an important decorative cycle dating back to the end of the sixteenth century, which covers the vaults of three rooms, attributed to Andrea Semino and his workshop. The main room houses the large fresco "Il Ratto di Elena" , surrounded by panels with episodes from the life of Paris , while the two smaller rooms house the cycles of Danae (Con Danae fertilized by Jupiter ) and of his son Perseus (with Minerva and the Muses on the Helicon ).

Grimaldi, Gio. Battista Palace at Piazza San Luca, 2
The main façade giving on to the square is dignified by the presence of low balconies and masks as well as by the sober 17th century portal beating the inscription PARVO BENE. At second floor level it partially hides three walled in Corinthian columns. Within, the hall and loggiaed stairs which rise parallel to the main façade up to the third floor provide the finishing touch to a typical 16th century aristocratic palace built onto a medieval structure; remains of the latter are visible at he back where the 16th century dark stone portal, now unused, marks an ealier access to the building from the narrow alleyway.

Nicolo Spinola Palace of San Luca at Via San Luca, 14
The dwelling does not renounce the spatial continuity of the atrium-staircase system that develops up to the second floor, with all the repertoire of rooms, re-rooms, living rooms and lounges, typical of the new living culture. The portal created by Giovanni Antonio Paracca called "il Valsoldo" , with herms and volutes, recalls the ways that the Bergamasco had introduced in the portal of the palazzo Tommaso Spinola uphill Santa Caterina at number 3.

Spinola Tomaso Palace at Salita Santa Caterina, 3
The "figure" of the Bergamasco, of full mannerist observance, can be read in the very fine and original design of the portal richly elaborated with female hermes set in a decoration with various architectural motifs, holding a broken tympanum with spiraling volutes, executed in white marble by the sculptors Giacomo Ponzello and Pompeo Bianchi ( 1560 ). What is most striking, however, of the decorative work of Bergamo, is the relief decoration of the façade , from the imaginative fresco and stucco square, similar to that in the same years executed by the Bergamasco in the Palace Gio. Vincenzo Imperiale di Campetto - built between 1555 and 1560 - and in the Palace Nicolosio Lomellini of Strada Nuova ( 1558 ).

Spinola Giorgio Palace at Salita Santa Caterina, 4
The loggia staircase that develops around the inner courtyard with a fountain (now covered in glass blocks) leads to a large area towards the Dinegro villa.

Clemente Della Rovere Palace at Piazza Rovere, 1
The Palace was commissioned in 1580 by Clemente Della Rovere, a Genoese aristocrat from the distinguished Della Rovere family, which counted among its members two Popes (Sixtus IV and Julius II), the Duke of Urbino Francesco Maria I and the Genoese Doge Francesco Maria della Rovere. In the arts, the family reached the peak of their influence in the 15th century, when Pope Sixtus IV Della Rovere commissioned the Sixtine Chapel, and in the 16th century, when Pope Julius II Della Rovere became known for his patronage of artists. In Genoa, the Doge Francesco Maria della Rovere was a fine collector of crystals, pottery and paintings, which he brought to the Palace, where he retired after completing his term at the head of the Genoese Government.

Doria Spinola Palace at Largo Eros Lanfranco, 1
At the end of the 16th century, Taddeo Carlone completed the facade with the marble portal at the main entrance. In 1624 the Palace passed to the Spinola family, which expanded it to the East with a richly-decorated gallery by Andrea Ansaldo, demolished in the 19th century to open via Roma. The main rooms were decorated by Giovanni and Luca Cambiaso with scenes from the Trojan War and battles between sea monsters. The Palace contains a room inspired by the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican, documenting the achievements of the Doria family and, in particular, of the first owner Antonio Doria, who worked as strategist for the Spanish Crown.