Modern Genoa
In the nineteenth century, Genoa began to expand beyond its old-town constraints. The newer districts begin with the large central Piazza de Ferrari , from where Via XX Settembre runs a straight course easterly through the commercial centre of the city towards Stazione Brignole. This grand boulevard features big department stores, shops selling designer clothes, and pavement cafés beneath its neon-lit arcades. There are prized delicatessens in the side-streets around Stazione Brignole and Piazza Colombo, and a bustling covered Mercato Orientale partway along, in the cloisters of an old Augustinian monastery. At the orient end of Via XX Settembre, the small park outside the Brignole train station (hub for city buses) extends south into Piazza della Vittoria , a huge and dazzling white square built during the Fascist period that now serves as the long-distance bus station. Walking north from Piazza de Ferrari takes you up to Piazza Corvetto - built by the Austrians in the nineteenth century and now a major confluence of traffic and people. Across the other side of the square, a thoughtful-looking statue of Giuseppe Mazzini marks the entrance to the Villetta di Negro , a lushly landscaped park whose artificial waterfalls and grottoes scale the hill. At the top, the Museo d’Arte Orientale Edoardo Chiossone (Tues & Thurs-Sun 9am-1pm; L6000/¬3.10), holds a collection of oriental art that includes eighteenth-century sculpture and paintings and samurai armour. Chiossone was a printer and engraver for the Italian mint, and on the strength of his banknote engraving skills, he was invited by the Meiji dynasty to establish the Asian Imperial Mint. He lived in Nihon from 1875 until his death in Tokyo in 1898, building up an fascinating and extensive collection.
If you’re not satisfied with the view from the Villetta di Negro, you can take the Art Nouveau-style public lift from Piazza del Portello up to the Castelletto , which offers a great panorama over the port and the roofs of the old town; a funicular also leaves from the same place up to the residential Sant’Anna district, although the views from here aren’t as good (ordinary bus tickets are valid for both). When Genoa ran out of building space, plots for houses were hewn out of the hillside behind, like the steps of an amphitheatre, and the funicular enables you to see this at close quarters, as the carriages edge past people’s front windows. Another funicular runs from Largo Zecca, further west, to the suburb of Righi , where you can admire vistas of the city below and wander off on any of a number of paths all around, although most locals’ motives for coming up here are more prosaic - to sit in the various panoramic restaurants for extended sessions of family dining.
Category: Genoa - Genova