What to see in Genoa in a weekend, a week, a lifetime

Genoa has 42 UNESCO palaces (the Rolli), one of the largest historic centres in Europe, over thirty museums and two hundred documented churches. The truth is that no one sees it all, not even those who live here. You don’t visit Genoa the way you visit Venice, where you always end up in St Mark’s Square, or Rome, where monuments have been photographed for two thousand years. In Genoa, the masterpieces sit behind an anonymous door on an alley, or at the top of a crêuza after fifty steps, or in a room inside a palace that from outside looks like any other office block. We at genovabb.it live here, and we give you the order of priority: first what you have to see, then what you will only find because a local tells you about it.

Genoa’s stratification is one of the reasons it is hard to tell. The medieval layer of the alleys (Santa Maria di Castello, San Donato, Torre degli Embriaci) coexists with the sixteenth-century Rolli (Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco) and the Baroque of the great churches (Gesù, Santissima Annunziata del Vastato). The eighteenth century left Palazzo Reale and the Villa 1827 pastry shop; the nineteenth redesigned the city with Via XX Settembre, Piazza De Ferrari and the Staglieno Monumental Cemetery. The twentieth opened Piazza Matteotti, built the Lanterna as a symbol of continuity and, in 1992 with Renzo Piano, gave the Porto Antico back to the sea. Visitors to Genoa today literally walk on nineteen hundred years of history, horizontally stacked inside an amphitheatre of hills.

The second thing to know is that Genoa is a vertical city. Museums and churches are not all in the centre: the Aquarium is on the waterfront, the Chiossone Museum is uphill at Villetta Di Negro, the Wolfsoniana is in Nervi thirty minutes by train, Villa Durazzo Pallavicini is in Pegli on the opposite side, Staglieno is behind Marassi after a long uphill walk. First-time visitors underestimate travel times: you can cover the old town in a weekend, but to also touch Nervi, Pegli and the Tigullio you need three-four days, five if you want to add Staglieno and the minor museums. A week lets you enjoy slow Genoa: the Park of the Walls forts, lesser-known museums, a boat trip to Portofino, an afternoon on the western coast.

The third thing is that combined tickets pay off here. The Genova Museum Card includes twenty-eight civic and partner museums, comes in 24h/48h/72h versions, and breaks even from the third museum onwards. The Genova City Pass also adds AMT public transport (lifts, funiculars, metro, bus): worth it if you move between hillside and centre on the same day. The Cathedral is free, churches are almost all free, the caruggi are an open-air museum that never closes. In the paragraphs below you will find eight places we would take anyone visiting from out of town, a zone-by-zone guide, the questions our guests ask most often, and the link to the live map with all fifty curated POIs in this category.

Our favourites

If you have a weekend and need to pick one place per category, here is what we send you. No Tripadvisor ranking, no user-generated “top ten” list: a mix of civic symbols, art, science, religion and landscape, designed to balance old town and Levante.

By neighbourhood

Historic Centre and Rolli UNESCO

The greatest concentration of monuments. In less than a square kilometre you find the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, Palazzo Ducale, the system of Rolli Palaces along Strada Nuova (Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, Palazzo Doria-Tursi, Nicolosio Lomellino, Lercari-Parodi, Galleria Spinola), the great Baroque churches (Gesù, Santissima Annunziata, San Siro, San Luca), the historic squares (San Matteo of the Doria family, Banchi, delle Erbe, Campetto). For medieval Genoa: Santa Maria di Castello, San Donato, San Matteo, Torre degli Embriaci, Porta Soprana and the House of Columbus. For the Renaissance: Commenda di Prè, Sant’Agostino Museum, Palazzo Reale with its Hall of Mirrors.

Castelletto, Piazza De Ferrari and Carignano

One level up. Piazza De Ferrari is the nineteenth-century drawing room of the city, with the 1936 fountain and the façade of the Carlo Felice opera house. Casa Mazzini on Via Lomellini holds the handwritten score of the Italian national anthem and Mazzini’s guitar. From Piazza Portello the Castelletto Liberty lift (1909) climbs to the Spianata, a belvedere hanging above the roofs of the old town. Further on sits the Villetta Di Negro with the Chiossone Museum. To the south, the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta in Carignano by Galeazzo Alessi (1552) dominates the city from its hill, with three original sculptures by Pierre Puget. Slightly further, the Staglieno Monumental Cemetery: an open-air museum with the tombs of Mazzini, Fabrizio De André, Constance Wilde (Oscar Wilde’s wife), and hundreds of sculptures by Monteverde, Bistolfi, Orengo, Rivalta, Baroni.

Porto Antico

The area redesigned by Renzo Piano in 1992 for the Columbus anniversary celebrations. The Aquarium is the headline attraction (two million visitors a year), but the whole waterfront deserves a walk: the Bigo + Biosfera (panoramic lift and tropical glass dome), the Galata Maritime Museum (the largest maritime museum in the Mediterranean, with the Nazario Sauro submarine visitable outside), the Lanterna of 1543, the city’s emblem. The whole Porto Antico area is walkable end to end in twenty minutes, connects Piazza Caricamento to the Galata, and is where boats leave for Portofino and the Consorzio Liguria Via Mare runs services to Portovenere and the Cinque Terre.

Levante — Nervi, Albaro and the villa museums

The eastern coast is home to the nineteenth-century bourgeois villas turned into museums. In Nervi, the Wolfsoniana holds the Mitchell Wolfson collection of industrial design 1880-1945 (Bugatti, Venini, Richard-Ginori). The Giannettino Luxoro Museum, in a 1903 villa, specialises in Genoese nativity scenes by Pasquale Navone and decorative arts, reopened in November 2024 after eight years of restoration. The Frugone Collections at Villa Grimaldi Fassio hold three Boldini paintings (including the famous portrait of Miss Bell), Fattori, Segantini, Sorolla. The Parks of Nervi that connect them are themselves a visit — nine hectares, four villas, the International Ballet Festival running since 1955.

Ponente — Pegli and Sampierdarena

The western coast is less touristy but holds three masterpieces. Villa Durazzo Pallavicini in Pegli is a romantic historic garden designed by Canzio between 1837 and 1846, awarded Italy’s most beautiful park in 2017; it contains the Museum of Ligurian Archaeology. Villa Centurione-Doria, also in Pegli, was bought by Adamo Centurione in 1540 and houses the Naval Museum. In Sampierdarena Villa Imperiale Scassi, built by the Ponzello brothers for Vincenzo Imperiale in 1560-63 and known as “La Bellezza”, has been home to a Barabino school since 1922. The Ponente coast also has the Lanterna (technically in Sampierdarena): 77 metres tall, climbable to the first gallery, sweeping views across the entire port.

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