Imagine arriving in Genoa from the sea. Not the Genoa of today, leisurely spread across the hills with its pastel colors, but the Genoa of the year one thousand two hundred. The Superba that was taking over the Mediterranean. If you had scanned the horizon from the deck of a galley returning from Constantinople or Corsica, you would not have seen the reassuring profile of Baroque bell towers or the elegant skyline of Renaissance palaces. You would have seen, quite literally, a forest of stone. A dark, dense and threatening wilderness of towering structures that desperately competed for vital space between the hill and the water.
If there is an image we struggle to overlay onto the present-day city, it is precisely this one. We are accustomed to thinking of medieval towers and associating them with towns like San Gimignano or cities like Bologna. Yet, during the golden centuries of the Republic, Genoa boasted an astounding number of private towers: historians estimate there were over sixty, perhaps even a hundred at the peak of building expansion. Every noble family, every consortium that counted for anything in the fierce political chessboard of the city, had to have its tower. It was not merely a matter of vanity, but of pure, raw survival in a metropolis where civil war was an almost daily habit.
Today, walking through the narrow streets, that forest seems to have vanished. But the truth, as often happens in this city that throws nothing away and builds the new by clinging to the old, is that the towers have not disappeared. They have been cut short, incorporated, hidden behind successive façades. They are still there, silent limestone skeletons, bearing the weight of centuries. If you know where to look, raising your eyes beyond the hanging laundry and electrical cables, you can read in watermark the map of a vertical city that for centuries lived with its gaze turned upward.
The race toward the sky: why build so high?
To understand the Genoese obsession with towers, you must immerse yourself in the particular social structure of the medieval city. Genoa had no strong, undisputed central power. The city was a mosaic of “alberghi,” that is, powerful extended family clans (such as the Doria, Spinola, Fieschi, and Grimaldi) that controlled entire neighborhoods. Each consortium had its own square, its own family church, its own porticoes and, inevitably, its own tower. The space between the sea and the mountains was already a tyrant then: unable to expand horizontally, the only path for architectural assertion was verticality.
The tower served a twofold function. On one hand, it was the stone manifesto of the family’s economic and political power. The taller the tower, the more ships the clan owned, the more flourishing its warehouses in the Levant. But the primary function was purely military. The caruggi of Genoa were narrow and winding not by chance, but by precise defensive design: a narrow alley is easy to barricade. During the frequent and bloody clashes between factions (Guelphs against Ghibellines, Rampini against Mascherati), the city transformed into an urban battlefield.
In these circumstances, families retreated into their towers. From the upper floors, which communicated with each other via temporary wooden bridges thrown across the roofs, stones, boiling pitch and crossbow bolts rained down on enemies trapped in the streets below. The towers were impregnable fortresses, lacking windows on the lower floors, fitted with thick rubble walls and often accessible only by retractable stairs. Living in Genoa in that period meant inhabiting a state of perpetual alert, in a city that resembled a petrified military encampment more than a peaceful merchant town.
Guglielmo Embriaci and the tower that defied time
If you want to see with your own eyes what this forest of stone must have looked like, there is an exact place you must go. Climbing from Porto Antico toward the Castello hill, the city’s oldest nucleus, you will come across the Tower of the Embriaci. It is the only private tower in Genoa to have come down to us practically intact, in its dizzying original height of over forty meters. Soaring, austere, crowned by a triple cornice of hanging arches and Guelph crenellations, it is a masterpiece of medieval engineering in Promontorio stone blocks.
But why did this particular tower survive the fury of time and men? The answer lies in the legend of its founder: Guglielmo Embriaco, called “Testadimaglio.” In 1099, during the First Crusade, this Genoese military leader proved decisive in the conquest of Jerusalem. By disassembling his ships, he built mobile siege towers that allowed the Crusaders to overcome the walls of the Holy City. Upon his return, he brought with him an immense spoil (including the famous Holy Chalice, long believed to be the Holy Grail, now preserved in the Treasury Museum of San Lorenzo) and incalculable prestige.
The Embriaci family became untouchable. Centuries later, when the city government decided to curb the arrogance of noble families by ordering the decapitation of all private towers, a special decree spared the Embriaci Tower. It was an act of deference to the memory of the man who had covered Genoa’s name in glory in the Holy Land. Today, that solitary tower rises above the rooftops of Santa Maria di Castello like a finger pointing toward the sky, a perpetual memorial to an era of ruthless heroes and daring navigators.
The fury of tower-toppling: what happened to the others?
You might be wondering: if there were dozens of towers, what happened to all the others? The answer lies in a word that appears frequently in documents of the time: “capitozzatura” (tower-toppling). Toward the end of the Thirteenth century, the political climate in Genoa began to change. The people, tired of the constant civil wars between nobles that paralyzed commerce and bloodied the streets, began to demand their political weight. The institution of the Captain of the People (the first was Guglielmo Boccanegra in 1257) marked the beginning of an attempt at forced pacification.
In 1296, a peremptory decree established a rule that would change the city’s skyline forever: no private tower could exceed the height of eighty Genoese palms (about twenty meters). All those exceeding this limit had to be “decapitated,” that is, lopped off at the top. It was a blow struck not only against architecture but against the pride of feudal aristocracy itself. The chronicles tell of the deafening noise of pickaxes, of dust obscuring the sun as the stone giants were brought down one after another.
However, Genoese people have always been eminently practical. The truncated sections of the severed towers were not completely demolished. The powerful square bases, with walls up to two meters thick, were reused. They were incorporated into subsequent buildings, covered with pitched roofs, plastered and frescoed in the centuries that followed. What was once a merciless watchtower became perhaps the stairwell of a Renaissance palace or the solid foundation of a seventeenth-century apartment building. The vertical city folded back upon itself, becoming horizontal, but maintaining its intact medieval structure intact.
A treasure hunt in stone: the surviving towers today
The beauty of discovering Genoa lies precisely in this layered treasure hunt. If you want to organize your walk in search of the lost towers, we recommend starting from Piazza San Matteo. This Gothic jewel was the private enclave of the extremely powerful Doria family. Here, observing the buildings with white and black stripes, you will notice that many of them have unusually massive corners, or unusually tall and narrow proportions: these are the bases of ancient family towers, merged together to create larger dwellings in the late Middle Ages.
Moving toward the opposite side of the historic center, you cannot miss the encounter with the most imposing and famous towers of the city, which however were not private but public: the towers of Porta Soprana. Erected in 1155 as part of the defensive walls against the threat of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, these two immense cylindrical towers protected the eastern entrance to the city. Their impressiveness was meant to instill fear and respect in anyone who approached them.
“In nomine sancte et individue trinitatis… Si pacem portas licet has tibi tangere portas / Si bellum queres tristis victusque recedes.”
— Stone inscription from 1155, inner wall of Porta Soprana
This proud inscription (which translated sounds like: “If you bring peace, you are permitted to touch these gates; if you seek war, you will leave sad and defeated”) perfectly captures the character of medieval Genoa: a merchant city, willing to welcome anyone bringing business, but ready to defend itself with unprecedented ferocity against any invader. Walking under that arch, brushing the hewn stone, means physically crossing through a time machine.
And then there are the hidden towers, those that require an attentive eye. In Vico dei Morandini, near Piazza San Donato, you can glimpse the black stone base of the Torre dei Morandini. In Via Canneto il Lungo, looking up, you will notice the Torre dei Maruffo, incorporated between buildings but still clearly legible in its vertical structure. Each of these stones tells a story of power, of wealth, of sieges and commercial agreements sealed in the flickering light of torches.
A weekend among clouds of stone
Exploring medieval Genoa is not like visiting a pre-packaged open-air museum. It is an active, physical experience. It requires you to stick your head into dark alleyways, to endure the disorientation of the labyrinth, to stop suddenly because a ray of sunlight has illuminated a carved capital fifteen meters high. It requires you, above all, to change your perspective: to stop looking at shop windows and start looking at cornices, rooftops, the geometries of the sky cut out by sloping roofs.
When you get lost in this maze (because you will get lost, it’s part of the game), try closing your eyes for a moment. Erase the noise of scooters and neon signs. Imagine the shrill sound of falcons nesting on the battlements, the crackling of torches, the acrid smell of wood smoke and sea salt. Imagine finding yourself at the bottom of a canyon of limestone, built not by nature, but by the fierce ambition of merchants who wanted to touch the clouds.
If this immersion in history has made you want to explore the caruggi with your own eyes, we invite you to experience the city from within. Our residences are nestled right in this thousand-year-old historic fabric, offering you modern comfort within walls that have centuries of stories to tell. You can book now your stay and get ready to walk with your nose in the air. Keep following our column for more forgotten stories: the Superba still has many secrets to reveal.
