So why isn’t Genoa better known? After all, 200 years ago it was a prime stop on the Grand Tour. Everyone from Charles Dickens to Mark Twain passed through; Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley set up home nearby. But fierce post-war industrialisation and urban planning knocked Genoa’s status as a cultural hub on the head. Today, its port eclipses almost everything else.
But the past is still here. Cruise ships cast off from docks beside the Porto Antico, where a young Christopher Columbus first got a taste for seafaring. It’s now a pedestrianised waterfront, redeveloped with shops and restaurants by Renzo Piano, the architect famous for designing, among other landmarks, Paris’s Centre Pompidou and London’s Shard. Beyond the flyover, which severs sea from city, lies what’s believed to be Europe’s largest medieval city centre.
This story is from the April 2022 edition of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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This story is from the April 2022 edition of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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