Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Heading west from Campetto on Via degli Orefici brings you out into a thriving commercial regularize centred on Piazza Banchi , a tiny, enclosed market square of secondhand books, records, fruit and flowers which was once the heart of the medieval city. The little church of San Pietro in Banchi overlooking the square was built in the sixteenth century after a plague: with little money to spare, the city authorities sold plots of commercial space in arcades around the church terrace in order to fund construction of the main building, an economic model that is familiar today but was virtually unknown at the time. It’s a short stroll west from Piazza Banchi out into the open spaces of Genoa’s port. The sea once came up to the vaulted arcades of Via Sottoripa, which runs alongside the main Piazza Caricamento ; these days the waterfront is blocked off by containers and fences, but there’s been a market here since the twelfth century, when small boats used to come ashore from galleys at anchor. Fruit and vegetable stalls still line the arcade, now interspersed with fly pitches selling sunglasses and pirated CDs.

On the southern edge of the square is the Palazzo di San Giorgio , a brightly painted fortified palace built in 1260 from the stones of a captured Venetian fortress. After the great sea-battle of Curzola in 1298, the Genoese used the building to keep their Venetian prisoners under lock and key; among them was one Marco Polo , who met a Pisan writer titled Rustichello inside and spun tales of adventure to him of worlds beyond the seas. After their release, Rustichello published the stories in a single volume that became one of the most famous books of all time, translated into English as The Travels of Marco Polo . In 1408, the building was taken over by the Banco di San Giorgio, a syndicate established to finance the war against Venice, which in the sixteenth century steered the city from trading to banking, thus turning Genoa into the leading financial centre of the day. These days, the palazzo is home to the harbour authorities, but you can ask the guardian on the door to let you in to see the medieval Sala dei Protettori and beautiful Sala Manica Lunga, with decor restored to its thirteenth-century grandeur following bomb alteration in World War II.

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