Via Garibaldi, Genoa — pedestrian street
Alex2015Genova · CC BY-SA 4.0

Via Garibaldi, Genoa

Via Giuseppe Garibaldi

  • 2 min read
  • 44.411° N 8.933° E

Interesting facts

  • The noseless stone telamons at the door of Palazzo Lercari Parodi recall an ancestor who, according to legend, cut off the noses of a Cypriot king's sailors.
  • Palazzo Doria Tursi keeps Il Cannone, Paganini's favourite Guarneri del Gesù violin, beside an 1834 copy that Vuillaume made in Paris for the virtuoso.
  • Peter Paul Rubens drew the street's palaces in plan and elevation, and his drawings helped carry the Genoese palace model to northern Europe.
  • Over the centuries the street was called Strada Maggiore, Strada Nuova and Via Aurea, and Madame de Staël nicknamed it the Street of Kings.
  • Palazzo Doria Tursi swallowed three of the original building plots, has housed the city government since 1848, and was once wrongly credited to Michelangelo.
  • Palazzo delle Torrette, begun in 1716, was built largely to hide the run-down medieval houses below from the windows of the grand Palazzo Tursi opposite.
  • Palazzo Cattaneo Adorno was built for two Spinola cousins as twin mirror-image houses, which is why it has two identical portals and two street numbers.
  • The layout of the whole street is credited to Bernardino Cantone, the city's architect and a pupil of Galeazzo Alessi, who probably shaped the plan himself.
  • The last heirs of the Brignole Sale family gave Palazzo Rosso to the city in 1874, and the Duchess of Galliera bequeathed Palazzo Bianco in 1888.
  • In 1594 the English traveller Fynes Moryson judged that no other city in the world had a street of such beauty, with every house fit for a king.

Why it is worth it

Via Garibaldi is a single street of palaces: barely 250 metres long and 7.5 metres wide, lined on both sides with the town houses of the Genoese aristocracy, each trying to outdo its neighbour in marble, stucco and painted ceilings. Laid out between 1558 and 1583 as the Strada Nuova, the "New Street", and renamed after Giuseppe Garibaldi only in 1882, it is the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Genoa: Le Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli", inscribed in 2006.

The street was the product of Genoa's golden age. In the second half of the 16th century and the early 17th, the city's noble families grew immensely rich as bankers to the Spanish Crown, financing among much else the army Spain kept in Flanders. They spent that wealth on a planned expansion beyond the cramped medieval centre, and the Strada Nuova was its showpiece: a straight, regular street of new palaces built on the hillside, where each house unfolds through an atrium, a courtyard, a grand staircase and a garden, stepping up the slope. In 1576 the Senate of the Republic began drawing up official lists — the rolli — of the private palaces whose owners could be required, by lottery, to lodge distinguished state guests on the Republic's behalf. Only three palaces in the city were judged grand enough for popes, emperors and kings, and two of them stand on this street: Palazzo Grimaldi, later Doria Tursi, and Palazzo Lercari Parodi.

Twelve of the World Heritage palaces line Via Garibaldi, from Palazzo Cambiaso Pallavicini at number 1 to Palazzo Rosso at number 18, built for the Brignole Sale brothers. Three of them — Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo Doria Tursi, which is also Genoa's city hall — together form the Strada Nuova Museums, with collections of paintings in their original palatial setting. Charles Dickens wrote in Pictures from Italy of the "Streets of Palaces" and their tiers of heavy stone balconies and terrace gardens. Genoa itself, today the capital of Liguria, was for centuries the seat of an independent republic whose fortunes rested on the sea and on finance.

Getting there

Via Garibaldi is in the historic centre of Genoa. Genoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport (GOA) is about 7 km away.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Genoa 5The Most Beautiful Places in Liguria 8The Most Beautiful Places in Italy 279The Most Beautiful Streets 13The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in Italy 22The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173

From the encyclopaedia

Via Giuseppe Garibaldi is a street in the historical centre of Genoa, in Northwestern Italy, well known for its ancient palaces. It is one of the Strade Nuove built by the Genoese aristocracy during the Renaissance. Since July 2006 it is inscribed in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Site Genoa: the Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

44.41111, 8.93278per Wikidata