Genova can feel to the passing motorist a little like an open prison, hemmed in by mountains on one side and the sea on the other. The network of motorways seems to twist and turn and disappear through tunnels as if making for the only piece of empty space left. It is always a relief to pass by the city and begin the drive along the Riviera. The weather this morning was a reminder of the location of the city at the foot of the mountains. It was fiercely cold with a very strong northerly wind coming down off the Appenines and snow being blown around the streets. Having left the car on the edge of the old town I walked across a snow and salt filled square to the Palazzo Ducale. This is now a major exhibition centre which today featured Van Gogh and Gauguin. There was also, appropriately enough, an exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of the race to the South Pole. The visitor has to be careful with palazzi in Genova so I walked down the street to the cathedral of San Lorenzo.
This fine building was begun as a romanesque church but was finished in a late mannerist style which verges on the baroque. The result is more exciting and certainly more agreeable than you might think. The mannerist interior has been squeezed into the confines of an altogether narrower building than it would have chosen for itself but the result is quite pleasing. Height is emphasised above the rather flamboyant decoration, itself unfinished, so that the whole has the feeling of something more manageable than Italy’s larger renaissance churches.
The next port of call was the street filled with palazzi, the via Garibaldi or via nuova as it was when all these fine buildings were put up. They are fine buildings, but there are a lot of them, too many now turned into banks and even perhaps too many turned into museums. The three main museums in the street are all linked together by a single entrance ticket and you soon get the measure of what you are in for. The Palazzo Rosso is the start of the tour with three floors devoted to art. This is followed by the Palazzo Bianco where there are similarly large numbers of pictures and the final link in the chain is the Palazzo Tursi which, not to be outdone, offers further examples. The quality of the painting could scarcely be uniform so it is no surprise to find that it isn’t; the common failing of similar places across Europe is to imagine that the local painters are just as good as the masters, if only the world at large would give them their due. There is the subtext that the only reason that they are not given their due is a meanness of spirit and simple bad feeling towards the town from the outside which is only to be expected.
There are many fine works on display, a list of the artists suggests as much. Mainly Italian, of course, there are works by Veronese, Guercino and a marble by Canova, as well as some surprising foreign names, Dürer, Zurabarán, Murillo and Reubens. It would take weeks to go through the pictures carefully so a rather rapid pace is required. This clearly upsets the many very willing guardians of the paintings who try to make the visitor look at everything in the order in which it was intended to be looked at. They follow from room to room, opening doors and indicating directions. Any deviation from the specified route is frowned upon and an omission is frankly scoffed at. Eyes are raised and the face takes on an expression that clearly says, “I knew you weren’t a real art lover”. No matter we have many more palaces to see.
Despite Genova being big and feeling big, it is a fine city to walk around. Not far away there is the Palazzo Spinola, another excellent building filled with art, ceramics, and sundry other curiosities. I hurried through as I was determined to see the Palazzo Reale, although as this turned out to be closed and so, for works, was the Palazzo Doria or Palazzo del Principe, I ended up being let off the hook somewhat. I happily wandered the old streets stopping for a bite of that wonderful Genovese invention, the focaccia, (focaccerie are everywhere) and mooching around the port area a little. The wind was so strong that I barely had a chance to examine the recent transformations. Renzo Piano has gone to a lot of work to try to make sense of this bleak area but he is fighting a losing battle. Ever since Genova decided to put a raised motorway right along the port side they condemned it to a slow death. One day it will be destroyed and the area will spring back to life.
I did find time due to the closure of other buildings to head up a small street to the museum of the Risorgimento. Liguria was a spearhead of the unification of Italy. Since the annexation of the old Duchy of Genova by Piemonte following the fall of Napoleon it was required to play a part in the birth of the nation. It was the birthplace of Mazzini, where the museum now stands, and of course the departure point of the Mille under the command of Giuseppe Garibaldi, himself born along the coast in Nice. The little museum shed an interesting light not so much on the events of the nineteenth century but more on the perception of those events and the feelings that ran high during the great shifts in politics that were necessary to create a nation. A brief but interesting stop in my day.
I walked briskly back to the car to drive to Alba. This turned out to be a folly of potentially large proportions, the car barely made it and I have been watching the snow fall steadily ever since. I may be here some time.
Dinner in Alba – Cincilla, via Giocosa 2. Excellent pizza and a very good tagliatelle ai fungi porcini.
