Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

From Piazza Banchi, the animated medieval lane Via San Luca heads north, lined with shops selling counterfeit designer clothes and accessories. This street was in Spinola family territory, and when the last of the family died, in 1958, their grand residence became the excellent Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola , located beside Piazza Pelliceria (Tues-Sat 9am-8pm, Sun 1-8pm; L8000/¬4.13; under-25s half-price; joint ticket with Palazzo Reale L12,000/¬6.20). Room 2 holds portraits by Van Dyck of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as men of books, while on the third upper floor are an intensely mournful Ecce Homo by the Sicilian master Antonello da Messina and the splendid Adoration of the Magi by Joos van Cleve, sawn into planks when stolen from the church of San Donato in the 1970s. Don’t miss the little terrace , way up on the spine of the roof and shaded with orange and lemon trees. The way north passes through a hectic and rather seedy neighbourhood centred on the vibrant Via della Maddalena alley, crowded with shops and stalls that ring with shouts in French and Arabic from the predominantly West and North African street-traders, doing business alongside Genoa’s burgeoning red-light trade (mostly serviced by women from developing countries, kidnapped and kept in virtual enslavement by local pimps). Steep lanes rise north of Via della Maddalena, lifting you out of the mêlée and into the ordered calm of Via Garibaldi.

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