Sampierdarena

[2] During the Italian Renaissance it became a residential area, with great palaces being built such as the Palazzo Imperiale Scassi, designed by Domenico and Giovanni Ponzello according to the style of Galeazzo Alessi and for this reason believed in the past to be a work of Alessi himself and the Palazzo Spinola di San Pietro (whose designer is unknown), one of those drawn by the painter Peter Paul Rubens in the book Palazzi di Genova, published in Antwerp in 1622.

Ansaldo & C. was one of the leading companies of the area involved in shipbuilding and armaments, building the first locomotive in Italy, named Sampierdarena,[2] before it was finally taken over by Finmeccanica in 1993.

At present it is part of the Genoa's city Municipio II (Centro Ovest), together with the neighbourhood of San Teodoro.

Sampdoria (and the unique striped bands across the kit) derives from local team Ginnastica Sampierdarenese, which merged with Società Andrea Doria in 1946.

At the border to the San Teodoro district, there stands the symbol of Genoa, the lighthouse, the oldest still-working one in the world.