Genoa

The site has been inhabited since the fifth or fourth millennium BC. In the fifth century BC the Ligures founded an oppidum on the hill now called Castello, and the town became known as the emporium of the Ligurians. Allied with Rome, it was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 209 BC and rebuilt. After Rome fell it was held by the Ostrogoths and then the Byzantines, the bishop of Milan took refuge here from the Lombards in 568, and in 934–35 a Fatimid fleet sacked and burned it. Genoa's rise began with the First Crusade, when its galleys and crossbowmen fought at Antioch and Jerusalem and won trading rights across the eastern Mediterranean.

As a maritime republic Genoa competed with Venice and Pisa, held Chios, Lesbos and the Crimean colony of Caffa, and annexed Corsica in 1347. In 1407 it founded the Bank of Saint George, and Christopher Columbus was born here around 1451. Families such as the Doria, Grimaldi, Balbi, Pallavicini and Serra grew rich financing the Spanish crown — the historian Fernand Braudel called 1557 to 1627 the 'age of the Genoese' — and built the palaces of the Strade Nuove. Decline followed: plague killed as many as half the inhabitants in 1656–57, France bombarded the city in 1684, and Corsica was ceded to France in 1768.

Napoleon ended the republic in 1797, and in 1800 a siege killed 30,000 of its 160,000 people. In the 19th century Genoa became a great port and a steel and shipbuilding centre. Recent decades brought the 1970 flood, Expo '92 and the rebuilding of the old harbour, the 2001 G8 summit, and in 2018 the collapse of the Morandi bridge, which killed 43 people; the replacement Genoa-Saint George Bridge opened in 2020.

Genoa was the European Capital of Culture in 2004 and the European Capital of Sport in 2024, and its culture is tied to the sea and to song. Niccolò Paganini was born here, and his violin, Il Cannone, is kept in Palazzo Tursi; the Teatro Carlo Felice, built in 1828 on Piazza De Ferrari, is the opera house. Italy's national anthem, written by Goffredo Mameli and set to music by the Genoese composer Michele Novaro in 1847, is believed to have had its first public performance in Genoa. The trallalero, polyphonic singing of Genoese dock workers, and the nostalgic songs in dialect fed the Scuola Genovese of singer-songwriters — Gino Paoli, Luigi Tenco, Bruno Lauzi, Fabrizio De André, Ivano Fossati — and De André's album Crêuza de mä of 1984 is sung entirely in Genoese.

Genoese, zeneize, is the main dialect of the Ligurian language and is still commonly spoken alongside Italian. Many street names recall the guilds of the old town, where botteghe storiche, historic shops, still trade beside palaces and churches. The city's patron is St John the Baptist, celebrated on 24 June, and its churches range across Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles.

Football is a passion and a division. Genoa C.F.C., whose football section was founded in 1893 by an English doctor, is the oldest club still playing in Italy; Sampdoria was formed in 1946 and won the league in 1991. Both play at the Luigi Ferraris stadium, and their derby, the Derby della Lanterna, is named after the lighthouse. The Genoa sail takes its name from the city, which also hosts one of the world's leading boat shows.

About 566,000 people live within the city limits, according to the 2026 figure, and more than 1.5 million in the wider metropolitan area along the Riviera. The population is old — seniors make up almost 29 per cent — and has been declining for a long time, though more slowly in the last decade. Immigrants make up about 15 per cent of residents, the largest groups born in Ecuador, Albania, Morocco, Romania and Bangladesh.

The port is the busiest in Italy, handling containers, ferries to the islands and cruise ships, and Genoa forms the southern corner of the industrial triangle with Milan and Turin. Steel faded after the late 1980s, but shipbuilding continues at Sestri Ponente, and Fincantieri, Leonardo, Ansaldo Energia, Costa Cruises and the Mediterranean Shipping Company are based in the city, along with the University of Genoa and the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia.

The city is long and steep: it covers about 30 km of coast and climbs the Polcevera and Bisagno valleys, so daily life involves stairs, lifts and long commutes — the average public-transport journey to and from work takes 54 minutes. Flood defences on the Bisagno and Ferreggiano streams have been rebuilt since the floods of 2010, 2011 and 2014, and the Waterfront di Levante project designed by Renzo Piano is transforming the old trade-fair grounds.

Genoa is the home of pesto: fresh Genoese basil, pine nuts, grated Parmesan and pecorino, garlic and olive oil pounded together and served with trofie, trenette or gnocchi, probably the city's most famous dish. Other sauces include agliata, a garlic sauce, salsa di noci, a walnut sauce, and tócco, a meat sauce — not to be confused with the Neapolitan Genovese. Prescinsêua, a fresh curd cheese, goes into a savoury spinach pie and into focaccia col formaggio.

The original focaccia is topped simply with olive oil, salt and a little white wine, and there are versions with onions. Farinata is a thin, crisp pie of chickpea flour, water, salt and olive oil. The sea supplies anchovies, stuffed or salted, sardines, octopus, squid and mussels, as well as stockfish for brandacujun and fish stews such as ciuppin, the forerunner of San Francisco's cioppino, and buridda. Cima alla genovese and cappon magro are the elaborate set pieces of the Genoese table, and pandolce began in 16th-century Genoa as a Christmas cake.

The city's 19th-century iron market halls include the Mercato del Ferro, Dinegro, Via Prè and Piazza Sarzano, while the circular Mercato Orientale on Via XX Settembre is the city's main market. The wines served are Ligurian: Pigato, Vermentino, Sciacchetrà, Rossese di Dolceacqua and Ciliegiolo del Tigullio.