Description
Via Garibaldi is Genoa's street of noble palaces: 250 metres in a straight line, rising gently, lined with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century mansions, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the Palazzi dei Rolli. Three of these palaces are museums.
It was laid out in 1550 as Strada Maggiore, then Strada Nuova: the great banking families left the medieval alleys to build here, in about forty years, homes fit for kings. Garibaldi's name only arrived in 1882.
The heart of the street is Palazzo Doria Tursi, the city hall since 1848: the grandest of them all, built across three plots, with two raised loggias flanking the central block. Further along, facing each other, stand Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Bianco.
Together with Tursi they form the Strada Nuova Museums, a single route through picture galleries and frescoed rooms. Palazzo Rosso takes its name from the red of its façade, Palazzo Bianco from the white of its own: both were given to the city by the last of the Brignole-Sale.
Even without going into the museums, the street is best enjoyed looking up. Many doorways stay open onto frescoed entrance halls, grand staircases and courtyards: in Palazzo Tobia Pallavicino, home of the Chamber of Commerce, you can see the staircase and the frescoes in the hall.
At number 3, Palazzo Lercari Parodi has two noseless atlantes at the entrance. They recall an ancestor of the man who built it, Megollo Lercari, who according to a story halfway between chronicle and legend took revenge on the King of Cyprus for an insult.
Having captured the king's ships, Megollo cut off the sailors' noses and sent them back pickled in brine inside barrels. Inside the palace, the vault of the great hall tells of his exploit in a fresco by Luca Cambiaso.
The street impressed illustrious visitors. Rubens drew its palaces, and his drawings spread the Renaissance style across Northern Europe. Madame de Staël called it Rue des Rois, the Street of Kings.
In 1843 Charles Dickens described the strip of deep blue sky between the two rows of immense mansions, the stone balconies, the open staircases and the hanging gardens with orange trees and oleanders, suspended above the street.
Palazzo Tursi was long wrongly attributed to Michelangelo, as Alexandre Dumas recalled. The eighteenth-century Palazzo delle Torrette, on the other hand, was built right opposite to hide from view the crumbling houses of the medieval quarter below.
Don't miss
• Palazzo Doria Tursi.
• Palazzo Rosso.
• Palazzo Bianco.
• Palazzo Lercari Parodi.
Did you know?
• As early as 1594, the nobles' servants showed the palaces to visiting foreigners, for the honour of their masters.
• It is considered the first planned development in Europe: a whole district divided into plots and designed in one go.
It was laid out in 1550 as Strada Maggiore, then Strada Nuova: the great banking families left the medieval alleys to build here, in about forty years, homes fit for kings. Garibaldi's name only arrived in 1882.
The heart of the street is Palazzo Doria Tursi, the city hall since 1848: the grandest of them all, built across three plots, with two raised loggias flanking the central block. Further along, facing each other, stand Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Bianco.
Together with Tursi they form the Strada Nuova Museums, a single route through picture galleries and frescoed rooms. Palazzo Rosso takes its name from the red of its façade, Palazzo Bianco from the white of its own: both were given to the city by the last of the Brignole-Sale.
Even without going into the museums, the street is best enjoyed looking up. Many doorways stay open onto frescoed entrance halls, grand staircases and courtyards: in Palazzo Tobia Pallavicino, home of the Chamber of Commerce, you can see the staircase and the frescoes in the hall.
At number 3, Palazzo Lercari Parodi has two noseless atlantes at the entrance. They recall an ancestor of the man who built it, Megollo Lercari, who according to a story halfway between chronicle and legend took revenge on the King of Cyprus for an insult.
Having captured the king's ships, Megollo cut off the sailors' noses and sent them back pickled in brine inside barrels. Inside the palace, the vault of the great hall tells of his exploit in a fresco by Luca Cambiaso.
The street impressed illustrious visitors. Rubens drew its palaces, and his drawings spread the Renaissance style across Northern Europe. Madame de Staël called it Rue des Rois, the Street of Kings.
In 1843 Charles Dickens described the strip of deep blue sky between the two rows of immense mansions, the stone balconies, the open staircases and the hanging gardens with orange trees and oleanders, suspended above the street.
Palazzo Tursi was long wrongly attributed to Michelangelo, as Alexandre Dumas recalled. The eighteenth-century Palazzo delle Torrette, on the other hand, was built right opposite to hide from view the crumbling houses of the medieval quarter below.
Don't miss
• Palazzo Doria Tursi.
• Palazzo Rosso.
• Palazzo Bianco.
• Palazzo Lercari Parodi.
Did you know?
• As early as 1594, the nobles' servants showed the palaces to visiting foreigners, for the honour of their masters.
• It is considered the first planned development in Europe: a whole district divided into plots and designed in one go.