Pirates, Robber Barons, and More Tomatoes

After a couple of days here, I am beginning to think that Genoa might be my favorite Italian city yet. It is miraculously--mercifully--free of hordes of tourists, and yet it has tons to offer. Genoa is Italy's busiest port and sixth largest city, and its history is waaaay cool. For centuries, especially before hometown boy Christopher Columbus opened up trade routes with North America, Genoa was a key nerve center between east and west. Its shipbuilding and seafaring trade made it one of the most important cities in the world--and, according to my Rough Guide, so did its "colonial exploitation and piracy." Pirates!!! Because of the massive flow of trade through the city, it grew rich and powerful and cosmopolitan, with fabulously wealthy merchant families engaged in vendetta over turf.

Genoa is still an important city, but its fortunes have waned over the centuries. You can walk through the narrow, twisty streets and still see vestiges of the city's glory years, but things are grittier now, in a way that manages to give the city character without making you fear for your life taking a stroll. You just keep your bag close and stay out of the darkest corners and it's hopefully all good. It's exactly the kind of city that I love. It's a little bit Barcelona and a little bit Tangier, elegant and edgy all at once.

I've spent much of my time here visiting the palatial former homes of the owners of Genoa's merchant banks, who were essentially the city's royalty. Most of the homes have been turned into museums that display the families' art collections and intact furnishings. Although my personal taste runs much more towards modern art than old masters, it's still been cool to see all the restored paintings, and I love the sculpture. Admittedly, though, it is admiring the robber barons, so it's maybe nine parts appreciation of the beauty and one part repugnance at the unimaginable opulence while others had so little. Actually maybe more than one part repugnance.

The best thing to do in Genoa, though, is just to walk. Genoa reminds me a lot of Fez--the old city's streets are an incomprehensible rabbit warren of tiny passages closed to cars, jutting off at unpredictable angles. But the buildings are much taller, which gives the place a shadowy and somewhat claustrophobic ambience. I had a great talk with the curator of one of the museums as we stood on the roof terrace looking out over the city. He explained that as a rich port city, Genoa was constantly under threat of attack, and because it was a port, it was impractical to build a wall around it. So the narrow, twisting streets were partly a defense mechanism: attacking troops couldn't march into the city in wide, sweeping columns--they had to come in lines of three and four across, always in danger of getting lost, and with bloodthirsty Genoans throwing rocks down on the soldiers the whole time. Again according to the Rough Guide, Henry James called Genoa, "the most winding, incoherent of cities, the most entangled topographical ravel in the world." Clearly he hadn't been to Fez, but after talking with the curator, it makes a lot more sense why Genoa developed this way.

I've spent hours just walking in circles, seeing how lost I can get before finding my way back. Yesterday, I found the "Oriental Market," which is a centuries-old covered market with stalls selling everything from fresh fish to bedsheets, although most of the space is for fruits and vegetables. The smell was fantastic: peaches and cherries are in season, and the fruity scent was mingling with the peppery smell of tomatoes overflowing from all the stalls. And astonishingly, there were no tourists there. I was so tempted to take pictures, but it just felt wrong, so I didn't. Instead, I bought tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella and made myself a picnic at my hotel.

So far, Genoa has been my favorite place in Italy, but of course the trip marches on. Today, I head north, to Turin, near where my grandmother was born. I am so looking forward to seeing her hometown for the first time. She passed away years ago, and I feel like this will be a way to feel close to her again. Let's see what happens. Off to catch my train!