Genoa

Dating back at least 2600 years ago, Genoa has always been an important seaport, a factor that, over the centuries, has made it a crossroads of peoples and cultures, and of which the Romans had a large part: it was, in fact, in the Roman period that the city had its first "commercial" and city streets, such as, for example, the Po Valley and the urban intersections called Quadrivii, due to their orthogonal structure, and still today called Carruggi present almost in every Ligurian city.

Before becoming a Maritime Republic and reaching its period of splendor, Genoa was conquered by the Lombards in 614 and annexed to the Holy Roman Empire by Charlemagne in 811, then sacked by the Saracens around 931.

It was in 1097 that Genoa founded the first overseas colony in Antioch , and in 1099 the Municipality of the city was born. To convince Frederick I to accept the autonomy of the city, the Genoese, in 1155, built the Walls of Barbaross a , or Murette . During the second half of the 12th century the empire of Genoa extended from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea but, since internal political struggles were frequent, the figure of the Doge was established.

At the end of the seafaring era, Admiral Andrea Doria made Genoa ally with Charles V of Habsburg and, from 1528, it became an important financial capital led by former merchants who became bankers. The government became more stable, but the gap between the social classes widened so much that the decline of the city began.

In later times Genoa was a land of conflict, from the bombings of Louis XIV in 1684, to the Austro-Savoy invasion that ended with the insurrection in 1746, until the conquest by Napoleon in 1797 and the annexation to the Kingdom of Savoy after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Genoese owed the construction of roads, the renewal of the port and the construction of many districts to the Savoy.

At the end of the twentieth century, Genoa had to face the crisis of heavy industry, the steel industry and the port, but it was able to recover from the crisis and today it is a European-level metropolis for tourism, art and culture.

On 14 August 2018 the Polcevera viaduct , also called the Morandi bridge partially collapsed causing 43 deaths but was rebuilt on a design donated to the city of Genoa by the architect Renzo Piano and inaugurated on 3 August 2020.