Description
The Galleria di Palazzo Bianco is the great picture gallery of Via Garibaldi in Genoa: in a palace with a pale eighteenth-century façade, paintings by Caravaggio, Rubens, van Dyck, Memling, Veronese and Zurbarán hang beside the masters of Genoese Baroque.
The name comes from the colour of its façades, in contrast with Palazzo Rosso, which stands right opposite. Together with Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Tursi it forms the Strada Nuova Museums, a single route.
The route takes you through European painting from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Among the best-known works are Caravaggio's Ecce Homo, Rubens's Venus and Mars, van Dyck's Vertumnus and Pomona and Hans Memling's Christ Blessing.
The Flemish section is rich, with the Cervara Polyptych by Gerard David. From Spain come Zurbarán's female saints and Murillo's Flight into Egypt; from France, Simon Vouet's David with the Head of Goliath.
Then comes the Genoese school, from Luca Cambiaso to Bernardo Strozzi, Grechetto, Domenico Piola and Alessandro Magnasco. By Cambiaso, look out for the self-portrait in which the painter shows himself painting his father.
The garden at the back has box-edged flowerbeds, risseu, the typical Genoese mosaic of black and white pebbles, and an octagonal fountain with a faun blowing into a shell.
In the upper garden, on the way through to Palazzo Tursi, stand the black-and-white striped arches of San Francesco di Castelletto, a large Gothic church demolished around 1820, absorbed into the nineteenth-century city hall.
The palace was built between 1530 and 1540 for Luca Grimaldi, before Strada Nuova had even been laid out: that is why its entrance faced the Salita di San Francesco. In the eighteenth century the Brignole-Sale rebuilt it and moved the main door onto Via Garibaldi.
The last heir, Maria Brignole-Sale, Duchess of Galliera, left it to the city on her death in 1889, with part of her collections, “for the creation of a public gallery”. The museum opened in 1892, for the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America.
The bombs of 1942 devastated it. It reopened in 1950 with Franco Albini's layout, considered one of the most significant works of Italian Rationalism.
Don't miss
• Caravaggio's Ecce Homo.
• The Cervara Polyptych.
• Luca Cambiaso's self-portrait.
• The garden with the faun fountain.
Did you know?
• In UNESCO's documents the palace still appears under its oldest name: Palazzo di Luca Grimaldi.
• The faun in the fountain is a modern copy: the original had been worn away by the water.
The name comes from the colour of its façades, in contrast with Palazzo Rosso, which stands right opposite. Together with Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Tursi it forms the Strada Nuova Museums, a single route.
The route takes you through European painting from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Among the best-known works are Caravaggio's Ecce Homo, Rubens's Venus and Mars, van Dyck's Vertumnus and Pomona and Hans Memling's Christ Blessing.
The Flemish section is rich, with the Cervara Polyptych by Gerard David. From Spain come Zurbarán's female saints and Murillo's Flight into Egypt; from France, Simon Vouet's David with the Head of Goliath.
Then comes the Genoese school, from Luca Cambiaso to Bernardo Strozzi, Grechetto, Domenico Piola and Alessandro Magnasco. By Cambiaso, look out for the self-portrait in which the painter shows himself painting his father.
The garden at the back has box-edged flowerbeds, risseu, the typical Genoese mosaic of black and white pebbles, and an octagonal fountain with a faun blowing into a shell.
In the upper garden, on the way through to Palazzo Tursi, stand the black-and-white striped arches of San Francesco di Castelletto, a large Gothic church demolished around 1820, absorbed into the nineteenth-century city hall.
The palace was built between 1530 and 1540 for Luca Grimaldi, before Strada Nuova had even been laid out: that is why its entrance faced the Salita di San Francesco. In the eighteenth century the Brignole-Sale rebuilt it and moved the main door onto Via Garibaldi.
The last heir, Maria Brignole-Sale, Duchess of Galliera, left it to the city on her death in 1889, with part of her collections, “for the creation of a public gallery”. The museum opened in 1892, for the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America.
The bombs of 1942 devastated it. It reopened in 1950 with Franco Albini's layout, considered one of the most significant works of Italian Rationalism.
Don't miss
• Caravaggio's Ecce Homo.
• The Cervara Polyptych.
• Luca Cambiaso's self-portrait.
• The garden with the faun fountain.
Did you know?
• In UNESCO's documents the palace still appears under its oldest name: Palazzo di Luca Grimaldi.
• The faun in the fountain is a modern copy: the original had been worn away by the water.