On the same Via Garibaldi, opposite Palazzo Rosso, stands Palazzo Bianco: 47 picture-gallery rooms, the largest art gallery in Liguria, one of the most important collections of Flemish art in Italy. The name comes from the colour of the façade, rebuilt in 1712 in bright white marmorino plaster — a colour that stood out in the middle of a street where every other palace had yellow, red or ochre façades. Originally built in 1530-1540 for Luca Grimaldi, then passed to the De Franchi, the Durazzo and Maria Brignole-Sale, donated to the Municipality of Genoa in 1884 by the Duchess of Galliera. It holds the celebrated Ecce Homo by Caravaggio (c. 1605), Memling’s Blessing Christ, works by Rubens, Van Dyck, Filippino Lippi, Veronese, and the entire Genoese school of painting between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Inscribed as one of the 42 Palazzi dei Rolli on the UNESCO list since 13 July 2006. Part of the Musei di Strada Nuova.
Where it is
The address is Via Giuseppe Garibaldi 11, 16124 Genova, on the Strada Nuova, across from Palazzo Rosso (number 18) and next to Palazzo Doria-Tursi (number 9). The three palaces form the richest concentration of the Musei di Strada Nuova.
On foot: two minutes from Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Doria-Tursi (they’re door to door), five minutes from Palazzo Ducale, six minutes from the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, eight minutes from Piazza De Ferrari. The De Ferrari underground stop is 350 metres away.
The museum entrance is through the portal on Via Garibaldi, with access to the combined Musei di Strada Nuova ticket (Palazzo Rosso + Bianco + Doria-Tursi). The single price covers all three, and the combined visit is the recommended one: it takes half a day to a full day but offers a unified route through Genoese and European art between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
Luca Grimaldi and the first construction (1530-1540)
The original palace was built between 1530 and 1540 for Luca Grimaldi, a member of one of the most powerful families of the Republic. The Strada Nuova was being born precisely in those years — the Grimaldi were among the first to invest in it with a new residence, built in a prestigious position. The original project was the work of masters active in mid-sixteenth-century Genoa (close to Galeazzo Alessi, the Perugian architect called to Genoa to reform city architecture), with a traditional plan: interior colonnaded courtyard, monumental staircase, piano nobile with state rooms.
On the name question — Palazzo di Luca Grimaldi in old documents — the palace changed hands several times over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, reflecting the fortunes and alliances of the Genoese noble families.
The De Franchi and Giacomo Viano’s reconstruction (1712)
After 1658 the palace passed to the De Franchi family, and in 1711 the indebted heirs of Federico De Franchi were forced to cede it to their main creditor: Maria Durazzo Brignole-Sale (aunt of the Maria Brignole-Sale De Ferrari, Duchess of Galliera, who would donate it to the city two centuries later). Maria Durazzo Brignole-Sale decided to renovate it in a modern key.
The commission went to architect Giacomo Viano, active in Genoa in the early eighteenth century, who completely rebuilt the façade facing Strada Nuova in 1712-1716. It was in this intervention that the palace took its current name: the new façade in bright white marmorino plaster (a lime-based finish treated to imitate marble, stuccoed to conceal stone joints) was designed in deliberate contrast with the red one of the Brignole-Sale palace (future Palazzo Rosso) opposite: the two family palaces, through the opposite colours of their façades, immediately signalled the “double” dimension of the Brignole estate.
The external stucco decorations were made between 1714 and 1716 by Taddeo Cantone (a Lombard working in Genoa), with geometric motifs and festoons. The façade, completed in this phase, is exactly what you see today: balanced, symmetrical, with three tiers of windows, stone balustrades, a central portal in grey marble. Restored several times in the twentieth century, it is considered one of the finest examples of late Genoese Baroque façade.
Maria Brignole-Sale’s donation (1884)
After the death of Maria Brignole-Sale De Ferrari, Duchess of Galliera, in 1888, Palazzo Bianco was definitively donated to the Municipality of Genoa under the terms of the 1884 will: the duchess bequeathed the palace “with all the ancient and modern works of art contained therein, together with a fund of property income whose annual yield is to be devoted to the acquisition of new works of art to enrich the city’s artistic heritage”.
It’s the largest private donation by a citizen to an Italian city in the nineteenth century, and it marks the beginning of the Pinacoteca Civica di Genova (Genoa Civic Picture Gallery). The works already contained in the palace (over 200 paintings of high period) form the initial nucleus; the following decades saw the collection grow with new acquisitions, as well as with other private donations (the Frugone collection, the Patrizia Querci collection, the Tavarone-Gobbi donation, and others).
Caravaggio’s Ecce Homo
The most celebrated piece of the Palazzo Bianco collection is the Ecce Homo by Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi, Milan 1571 — Porto Ercole 1610), oil on canvas dated around 1605. It’s one of the most important works of the Caravaggesque corpus on a religious subject, and perhaps the most universally known painting in the whole Genoese collection.
The work shows the flagellated Christ presented by Pilate to the crowd — the biblical episode of the Ecce Homo (“Behold the man”) from John 19:5. Caravaggio offers an interpretation of extreme psychological realism: the face of Christ is that of an exhausted man, marked by suffering but with an inner dignity that strikes the visitor. Pilate, to the right, is portrayed as a weary, indifferent functionary, while the tormentor to the left throws the red mantle of mockery onto Christ’s shoulders.
The provenance of the painting is uncertain. The accepted hypotheses see the work as commissioned to Caravaggio during one of his Roman sojourns between 1605 and 1606, before the painter’s flight into exile after the murder of Ranuccio Tomassoni. The painting would have arrived in Genoa in one of the subsequent passages, probably through one of the Genoese merchants active in Rome at the start of the seventeenth century. Historical documentation of the painting in Genoa becomes certain only from the eighteenth century, when it is already in the Brignole-Sale collections; and from there it entered the civic heritage in 1884.
The painting is displayed in a dedicated room on the piano nobile, in a central position, illuminated with the technical care designed in the 1950s by Franco Albini to avoid damaging the canvas and to enhance its Caravaggesque light.
The other works
Palazzo Bianco is the main art gallery in Liguria, with over 600 works distributed across 47 rooms. The collection documents the evolution of European painting from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. A selection of the most important works:
Flemish school: Blessing Christ by Hans Memling (c. 1480), panel of the highest quality from the Bruges school; works by Gerard David, Joos van Cleve (Madonna and Child), Peter Paul Rubens (Venus and Mars), Anthony Van Dyck (Christ of the Coin, portraits).
Italian school: Filippino Lippi (Saint Sebastian), Paolo Veronese (Crucifixion), Caravaggio (the Ecce Homo, already described), Giulio Cesare Procaccini (religious scenes). Neapolitan school: works by Mattia Preti, Francesco Solimena, Luca Giordano.
Genoese school: the richest in quantity and for coherence with the local production. Bernardo Strozzi (“il Cappuccino”, 1581-1644) with the Madonna adoring the Child, Journey to Bethlehem, various portraits; Domenico Piola with cycles of frescoes (some in situ in the palace) and religious canvases; Gregorio De Ferrari; Bartolomeo Guidobono; Domenico Fiasella (“il Sarzana”); Giovanni Battista Castello (il Bergamasco), Bernardo Castello, Lazzaro Tavarone, Andrea Ansaldo. These are the painters of the so-called “Genoese School” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one of the most important currents of Italian Baroque, here represented with encyclopaedic coherence.
Sculptures: some marble works between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, including reliefs by Giambologna, busts of the Berninian school.
Albini’s installation and reading of the palace
The museum installation is the one signed in the 1950s and 1960s by Franco Albini (1905-1977) and Franca Helg, on a par with that of Palazzo Rosso. The philosophy is the same: fully preserve the historical environment of the palace, illuminate the works with spot lights, avoid intrusive display cases, respect the narrative sequence of the rooms.
The difference with Palazzo Rosso is one of scale: Palazzo Bianco has more rooms (47 against Palazzo Rosso’s 22), a more articulated route, a higher concentration of works of art compared to the quantity of historic furnishings (many original furnishings had been lost over the centuries). Albini therefore privileged the reading of the history of European painting between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries as the museum’s main theme, yet constantly integrating the works with the palace’s historical context (original fresco cycles in some rooms, Baroque ceilings, original marbles of the piano nobile).
Practical information
Hours: Tuesday–Friday 9:00–19:00, Saturday–Sunday 10:00–19:30, last entry one hour before closing. Closed non-holiday Mondays.
Musei di Strada Nuova tickets (combined for Palazzo Rosso + Bianco + Doria-Tursi):
- Full adult: €9
- Reduced: €7
- Free under 18, first Sunday of the month, Genoa residents
Contacts: telephone +39 010 5572193, official website museidigenova.it. Audio guides available. Guided tours can be booked. The palace is fully accessible to visitors with reduced mobility (lifts to all floors).
What’s nearby
The three Musei di Strada Nuova are all in a row: after Palazzo Bianco, it’s natural to visit Palazzo Rosso (across the street) and Palazzo Doria-Tursi (next door). 5–10 minutes away on foot: Palazzo Spinola, the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, Palazzo Ducale.
For lunch or dinner nearby: Klainguti in Piazza Soziglia (3 minutes away, Verdi’s Falstaff brioche), Sa Pesta for savoury vegetable pies, Marescotti in Via Fossatello, Zeffirino in Via XX Settembre, I Tre Merli at the Porto Antico. For an aperitivo: Les Rouges in Piazza Campetto.
