Yeah, we went there. Mike even found us a great parking spot--as in, it was so close it had this view--but it was of dubious legality, and so we didn't spend as much time in the vicinity of the Tower as one might have liked. Turns out they also have a genuinely interesting museum there, as well as an an ancient cemetery with remnants of 14th-century frescoes, neither of which we've ever visited. Or even knew about, to be honest. Things there tend to get overshadowed, as you might imagine.
(But we know now, don't we?)
Overshadowed by this, that is. It really is that lean-y and surrounded by tourists. (Believe it or not, construction on this began in 1173 and took almost 200 years to complete.)
Also overlooked: the lovely baptistery (built 1152-1363)...
...and the cathedral (built 1063-1350) also on the site, which is called the "Square of Miracles," or Piazza dei Miracoli, with the Leaning Tower. They really are three gorgeous and tremendously old pieces of architecture.
Look at these details on the cathedral, for example. Really intricate and lovely.
Also of note: these incredible 12th-century walls that surround the entire piazza. So. Much. Old stuff.
And then, to Genoa! I had forgotten how truly unique and incredible this city is, and it might have just moved into my top three favorite cities of all time.* It's dirty, it's a little dangerous, it's dark, and it's absolutely glorious. Full of the narrowest, most labyrinthine little medieval alleys you can imagine, packed with tiny shops and vendors of everything and craftspeople and food and then there's the ocean and the seafood and pesto. And fortresses and ancient city walls and art and palaces and museums and frescoes...and the list goes on. A genuinely amazing place.
Our first stop was the Genoa aquarium, since it was raining and all...but on the way, we passed the Porta dei Vacca ("Gate of the Cow," heh, heh), one of the surviving 12th-century city gates.
And now, to indulge in a little fish photography. I love aquariums, people: they are a constant source of wonder. Especially the tropical ones. This guy was swimming around in the manatee tank, munching proudly (and rather territorially) on a carrot.
And speaking of manatees! When we arrived, these guys were getting fed. By hand. I was so very jealous of their caretakers...these things look ridiculously huggable, and those people were getting to pet them.
Pretty stripes.
Tomato frog! Whose primary defense is to "secrete a sticky substance that glues the predator's mouth together for some days."** HAH. Take that, would-be frog-eater!
Such interesting things grow on the sea floor.
Tiniest starfish ever. This thing would have fit on a pencil eraser.
These fish have legs. Missing link found, people!
The we headed to dinner, which was a bit of a heartbreaker, in that the sentimental-favorite restaurant we'd booked turned out to be closed that evening...but also a victory in that we ended up in the hole-in-the-wall Trattoria della Darsena, where we ate a meal of absolutely ridiculous size and terrific deliciousness. We started with a ginormous platter of mixed seafood antipasti--chickpea fritters (super fluffy, and with chives!), fried anchovies, fried anchovies stuffed with veggies, wee little french fries, and an octopus salad with oil, parsley, vinegar, garlic, and lime juice. It was FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC, and then we moved on to a plate of trofie pasta with pesto for Mom, Genovese ravioli (cheese, garlic, herbs) in walnut sauce for me and Dad, and a plate of testaroli with pesto for Mike. (Testaroli: new to us, but super interesting--a griddled, sliced, spongy, pancake-like pasta that dates back at least to the 14th century. No, really. They have records.) Perhaps foolishly, we'd all ordered a third course as well: the mixed fish plate for Mom, shrimp scaloppine for Dad, cima alla Genovese for Mike, and a spectacular fish soup for me. (You'd skip dessert, too.)
Sadly, we descended upon our antipasto platter like locusts, and this was all that was left when it occurred to us that perhaps we should have documented it in pictures. Oops.
Trofie with pesto! So very Genovese and so very delicious.
My "fish soup" containing a thing or two more than just fish.
The next day, we lucked out a bit with the weather, in that it didn't just downpour the whole time, and so we hit the crazy-dark-twisty streets to see what we could see. (Genoa, in case you're wondering, would be a marvelous place to spend a week just wandering around, getting lost, snacking, ducking into strange buildings and taking pictures like a crazy person. It's that photogenic and intriguing and marvelous.)
Such narrow alleyways.
Every now and then you'll look up and there's an arch. Or a church tower. Or both.
You might even discover an antique store in a slightly crumbling 16th-century palace.
You might find Piazza San Matteo, with its 13th-century church...
...and 14th-century cloisters, lined with medieval script and monument fragments, and completely isolated from noise and people. (Did I mention that, with very few exceptions, Genoa is relatively tourist-free?)
You might also find your way to Porta Soprana, one of the city's symbols, and another 12th-century city gate. (This one you can climb.)
It's got its own inscription from 1155-ish. (Srsly, look at that text!)
And if you've found Porta Soprana, you're also likely to see the little 12th-century cloister of Sant'Andrea, all that's left of a monastic complex from the year 1009.
Ahhhhhh, gratuitous artsy shot, couldn't help myself! Sorry. I'm better now.
(Look at those little column capitals, though! So fancy! So delicate!)
It's right next door to the tiny childhood home of Cristoforo Colombo...you may have heard of him in history class once or twice.
If you're near the waterfront, you'll probably see the little green and yellow churches in Piazza San Giorgio.
You'll probably stumble across medieval remnants, like the 12th-century tower of the Embriaci here.
It's just down the hill from the ruined church of Santa Maria in Passione, built between 1553 and 1559 and partially destroyed during WWII.
Right next to the church you'd find this tiny theater in the midst of renovation, but preparing for a performance nonetheless.
And, of course, if you're traveling with me, you're absolutely going to visit the cathedral of San Lorenzo.
It's got some extraordinary exterior details.
So stripey! So twisty! So intricate!
The interior's pretty interesting, too, with more stripes, and lots of other ancient and interesting little tidbits.
Like this, for example: the chapel of St. John the Baptist, wherein they claim to have his bones in that sarcophagus in the middle.
And this: a WWII bomb which crashed through the cathedral in February 1941, but didn't explode, due to the soft materials used in the cathedral's construction.
San Lorenzo also has a pretty fantastic treasury. Here, for example, is a green glass bowl dating to sometime before the 10th century, brought to Genoa during the Crusades, and believed during the Middle Ages to be the Holy Grail. (It was broken by Napoleon's troops when it was taken to Paris in the early 19th century.)
This thing is a 16th-century silver casket still in use for transporting the Holy Eucharist during various processions. It weighs 70 kg (over 150 pounds)--those lucky casket-bearers! (Careful, it's old. And heavy. But also really old and irreplaceable.)
Fourteenth-century jeweled cross containing (supposed) splinters from the cross. Man, how I love me some giant gold and old bejeweled things...!
After you visit the treasury and find out that your ticket is also valid for the Diocese Museum, you might be gently shepherded around the corner to it by the nice man from the treasury entrance. All kinds of interesting and unexpected things await you there...
...maybe, say, like the tomb of a 14th-century Genovese noble, in the 12th-century basement.
Also in the basement: a cannonball from the bombardment of the city by Louis XIV in 1684. (Ok, ok, so, I neglected to take a photo of the actual cannonball. I feel like I've really let myself down with this one, seeing as how we all know that I love history and it's Louis XIV, for crying out loud. At any rate, please enjoy this sign telling you about it in Italian.)
You'd probably also see this gorgeous little fresco, one of a handful salvaged from the cathedral (whose walls are now mostly bare) and restored.
Upstairs, inside the 17th-century upper gallery, are these crazily painted walls with scenes from the 18th-century diocesan chapter.
Like, crazily painted.
Inside one of the nearby rooms is this 13th-century fresco of the cycle of the months of the year.
By far the most fascinating room you'll find, though, is--naturally--one you can't take photos in. They call it the "Blue of Genoa," and it's two rooms lined with large paintings of the Passion of Christ done on linen canvas, entirely in monochromatic blue. The story is that the material and color is actually the precursor to modern blue jeans, but what's really interesting is the detail in the paintings themselves and the fact that they've been around since the 16th century (just wow). They've got a short description (in Italiano, naturalmente!) and a few photos here. It was a truly unexpected and utterly unique find, and I'm so glad that nice man herded us into what turned out to be a great museum. (There was way more good stuff in there than I've posted here.)
Ok, so I'll dispense with the second-person narrative now...I'm sure you were getting irritated with it, and it's somewhat tiresome to write in, so I'll just say: keep your head up when roaming the streets of Genoa, and you'll see things like this all over the place.
We strolled past the church of San Pietro in Banchi. (Speaking of words that sound like "bank," the Genovese basically invented our modern concept of banking, FYI. True fact.)
Another of the more famous sights of the city: the waterfront Palazzo di San Giorgio, which, despite its rather modern facade, dates to the 13th century.
We also rode the elevator up the Bigo, this crazy iron spidery-thing built at the port by Renzo Piano for the Columbus expo in 1992. (If you look way, way in the distance, on top of that hill, you'll see a small fortress building. This city is quite literally ringed with them--there are 16 main forts, as well as numerous walls and smaller outposts, all built in the 17th century. From up high, you can see a lot of it, and it's incredible.)
You ride the Bigo for the views, obviously.
How appropriate: a good view of the Lanterna (yet another city symbol) as the sun is setting. This version of the famed lighthouse was built in 1543, and if you believe Wikipedia, it was the tallest in the world until 1902. (Apparently, you can climb it. I will next time.)
Dinner on evening no. 2 was--thankfully--at Trattoria Pino's, the restaurant that had been closed on the previous night, so hooray! A little background information: Mike and I had dined at Pino's eight years ago, on our very first trip to Italy for the View Conference that started this whole "let's live in Europe!" thing. We had an amazing meal, and the proprietor, Pino, was a character and a half. His face (bushy mustache and lots of hair...rather Borat-esque, as it was taken sometime probably in the 1980s) was on all of the wine bottles. There was no written menu--he just told us what he had on offer that night, and his family was the staff. Pino's wife filletted to perfection the fish Mike had ordered in under a minute. (I can actually tell you most of what we ate: Mike started with a tremendous taglierini with meat sauce, and I had trofie al pesto, and then he had that fish. No clue what I had as my second plate...I think the fish stole the show.) Anyway...all of that to say that we absolutely had to get back to Pino's, and so we made it happen that second night. Thankfully, there was zero let-down. Pino did it again.
The interior was just as glorious and beach-themed as we'd remembered.
What we ate: a spaghetti-like pasta with smoked fish; trofie al pesto; more of that ravioli in walnut sauce; seafood rice with clams, calamari, mussels, and tomato (pictured here, duh); and for dessert, tiramisu and profiteroles. ALL TRULY DELICIOUS. (Those profiteroles were special.)
His face is still on the wine bottles! Just with a slightly more recent photo.
Pino and my Dad. I think (I hope!) Pino got a kick out of us, since we let him pick our menu and we were having a grand old time and wouldn't stop complimenting his food. What a delightful and memorable evening.
The next morning, we departed in absolutely torrential rains for the Piedmont and Torino. It wasn't until the day after that we learned that as we were leaving, the eastern side of Genoa--slightly away from the old town where we were exploring--had flooded terribly when the Bisagno river burst its banks. They'd gotten 700 millimeters of rain in in 72 hours--over two-thirds the expected annual rainfall for the area. One person died and the cleanup was expected to cost 200 million Euros. The real insult to the people of Genoa, however, is that 35 million Euros earmarked for shoring up the city's flood protection in 2011--the last time it experienced this sort of catastrophic flooding--has been tied up in the courts ever since. Meaning that exactly zero measures were taken to prevent this sort of disaster from happening again. (There's a decent article containing what seems to be relatively reliable info, as well as some photos of the damage and of people helping each other, here.)
I think it's obvious how much I love this city--and if it's not, I'll just say it: I love it so!--and I don't really have the words for how appalling I find the political situation in Italy, especially when it affects people this tragically. I tried desperately to find ways for you to donate to the flood relief--links that you could click on or Pay Pal options or something, anything--but it's next-to-impossible outside of Italy, much less in English...so instead, I'll just ask that you pray for Genoa, or send them positive vibes, think them positive thoughts, or do whatever it is that you do when you can't help people in person (or even monetarily). I certainly am and will continue to do so. Even better, if you get a chance, go there. Pour your money into their economy, buy their food and souvenirs, ride their giant-iron-spider elevators, and tip nicely.***
Hooo. So. That got a bit heavy there, but these things don't tend to make the news for very long, if at all, and I'm fairly passionate both about the place and the situation, so I thought I'd at least put it on your respective radars, my dear and loyal readers.
Next up: a surprise jaunt to the Piedmont, and a quick return to our dear Torino.
*It's a constantly changing list, but for now, it's London, Istanbul, Genoa, in no particular order. In case you were really that curious.
**Thanks for the info, aquarium signage!
***UPDATE: it wasn't working last night, but today it seems to be back up. If you want to donate, you can go do it through the Italian Red Cross website. It's in Italian, but if you're running Chrome--and let's be honest, you should be--it translates quite nicely. Go to this page and make sure you select "Emergenza Liguria 2014" from the drop-down. There's a PayPal option and everything. (I checked it out...it's secure and it works.) Whether you choose to donate, dear readers, I thank you for your generosity of spirit and for sticking with me this long.
Thanks for taking me along on your trip...vicariously! You all find such wonderful places to visit! Glad you had a good time.
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