Villas of Genoa
In Great Genoa area alone, there were more than two hundred and sixty villas, a universe of residences, some of which have been lost, most of which are in ruins or have been used for other purposes, but which, through the few that have been restored and can be visited today, offer a glimpse of the splendor of a ruling class whose entrepreneurial and political skills made them very wealthy.
[3] Due to the difficulties of transportation at the time, summer residences were mainly built in the hilly and coastal areas immediately outside the city walls, particularly those most suitable for the development of agricultural land.
This proximity meant that, as early as the 14th century, the city and its suburbs appeared to those arriving in Genoa from the sea as one large area dotted with sumptuous villas and gardens, as witnessed by illustrious travelers, including Petrarch.
[1] From the 16th century, with the consolidation of wealth in the city among the noble families of feudal origin (such as the Doria, Spinola, Fieschi, Grimaldi and Imperiale) and those of wealthy Genoese merchants and bankers, a new concept of the villa spread, which, from being a center of agricultural production, also became a holiday home and a stately residence.
The suburbs of Genoa thus became the prestigious residences of wealthy patrician families, who left their palaces in the city during the summer months to "go to the villa" to spend the warm season.
[1][4][2][5][6] The trend of vacationing gave rise to a real competition among the aristocratic families to build sumptuous villas that would be admired even by illustrious travelers, calling on the best architects of the time to design them, first and foremost Galeazzo Alessi from Perugia, one of the protagonists of the Genoese cultural renewal in the 16th century.
[7][1][4] Alessi introduced an innovative architectural model in Genoa: the so-called "Alessian cube", characterized by a compact building with a square base, no courtyard but with a large hall in the center of the piano nobile, pyramidal roofs and high open loggias in the main or rear façade, which defined a new relationship with the outside space, making the villa a dominant element in the landscape.
[8][5][2] Villas were built in large numbers mainly on the hill of Albaro and in Sampierdarena, localities close to the city, but also in the nearest riparian centers to the east (from Quarto to Nervi) and west (from Cornigliano to Voltri) and in the valleys of the Polcevera and Bisagno rivers.
The patrician families did not spare the resources to build their houses, an immense architectural and historical heritage that still includes more than two hundred suburban villas, almost half of them between Albaro and Nervi.
[1] During the same period, the historic villas, too large for the new needs, were divided into apartments or given to religious communities,[4] in most cases losing their gardens to subdivisions and urban sprawl; the few that remained are now public parks.
[1][2] In the western part of the city, which experienced a period of intense industrialization between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, factories were built on the old estates attached to the villas,[12] opposed in vain by the last representatives of the aristocracy associated with them.
However, what remains of this immense architectural heritage allows the visitor, despite the deterioration of the buildings, to perceive the former splendor of those holiday homes that characterized the Genoese landscape for centuries.
This is the part of the city that has undergone fewer transformations of a productive nature and where numerous and better-preserved ancient patrician residences remain, even with their parks and gardens, although they have been downsized by the strong residential expansion.
[1] Numerous historic villas can still be found in the Albaro district, which was one of the favorite areas of the Genoese aristocrats; many of them, renovated, are partly subdivided into apartments, while others house educational institutions and university campuses, clinics and nursing homes.
[1][2][7] The last owner, shipowner Carlo Barabino, sold it in 1926 to the municipality of Genoa, which two years later made it the home of the modern art gallery (which now also houses works from the Wolfson collection).
[54] It is referred to generically as a 16th-century building, and in the 1757 Vinzonian map it is described as belonging to the estate of Tomaso Spinola, endowed with an Italianate garden and extensive grounds that stretched westward.
The "castle" stood on the promontory of Sant'Andrea, formerly the site of a Benedictine monastery, and until World War I the Raggio family housed high representatives of the nobility and politics.
