Genoa Vacations, Cruises & Tours Guide 


In this section you will find  the very best of the best Genoa Luxury hotels. Wonderful Genoa Attractions and Genoa Hotels and resorts .Genoa Restaurants, Genoa Rivers and Lakes ,Genoa Parks---plus tons of enjoyable virtual tours and streaming videos---You will find everything here except the sunscreen.

• Restaurants
• River & Lakes
• Parks
• Attractions

Visitors either love or hate Genoa and few can remain indifferent. Most are wary at first and then begin to appreciate the city after having taken time to discover it. As Dickens wrote in 1843: 'I would never have thought that I would have become attached to the stones of the Genoan streets, and to think of the city with affection, as the place in which I had spent many hours of peace and happiness'. Even today, Genoa provokes conflicting feelings, due to the fact that it is a place of contradictions. It is a Mediterranean port, which has always traded with nearby countries and so it has assimilated some of their habits and words, and it has always been a city of merchants and bankers, known by all as the most English city in Italy.

It is easy to be enraptured by the maze of narrow streets in the historic centre. Genoa is a vertical city, where the sky can sometimes feel very close and give one a feeling of dizziness. Refined palaces are side by side with humble houses, which in the historic centre, are all close to the beautiful churches of the city, which have austere, black and white striped, marble facades or opulent, baroque architecture. Genoa has a secret beauty that can be found in its daring architecture, traces of splendid frescoes and imposing, noble palaces. Beginning in Strada Nuova, now known as Via Garibaldi, this is a visible sign of the historic period of the seventeenth century, when the great, Genovese families were at their richest.

 This is a unique street because of the urban planning that it has inspired and the number of palaces here and their beauty. Visitors can enter the internal gardens and see the frescoes in the great salons. Some of these buldings are now museums and are home to works of art by Genovese artist and the great, Flemish school, such as the (Galleria di Palazzo Bianco and the Galleria di Palazzo Rosso). A visit to the nearby National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola is also a chance to learn about the habits and furnishings of Genovese homes of the period.

Via Balbi is also rich with palaces and now houses the university buildings of the School of the Humanities. Via Assarotti, is a sign of the nineteenth century expansion towards the hills, Via XX Settembre is a modern, elegant street full of business and commerce, and finally, Corso Italia, is the promenade leading to the sea and Boccadasse .