Had to wait with writing this blog until I walked down the Strade Nuove yesterday. What an experience. There are so many beautiful 16th and 17th century palaces it almost overwhelms. Usually, only royals had the means to build places like this. But Genoa in the 16th and 17thcentury was different. Spain received every year about 300 tons of silver from Latin America and the Genovese bankers handled it for the “small” commission of 10%. Having kicked out the Jewish community in 1492, Spain had no other choice. Genoa earned the equivalence of 30 tons of silver or 250’000 pounds every fall when the Treasure Fleet arrived. To put this into perspective, a baron made about 500 pounds per year, a king of a medium size kingdom maybe 30’000. The sums available to the wealthy Genovese families were staggering. No wonder they could afford these beautiful palaces.
Palazzo Doria Tursi (now Genoa’s town hall) at the Strada Nuoava (Via Garribaldi)
There is little to add to Charles Dicken’s lines from 1846 which I found quoted in a Wikipedia article:
When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova and the Strada Balbi! or how the former looked one summer day, when I first saw it underneath the brightest and most intensely blue of summer skies: which its narrow perspective of immense mansions, reduced to a tapering and most precious strip of brightness, looking down upon the heavy shade below! The endless details of these rich Palaces: the walls of some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great, heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier: with here and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up—a huge marble platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred lower windows, immense public staircases, thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers: among which the eye wanders again, and again, and again, as every palace is succeeded by another- the terrace gardens between house and house, with green arches of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street—the painted halls, mouldering, and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and still shining out in beautiful colours and voluptuous designs...
Forty Palazzi dei Rolli in the center of Genoa alone
Palazzo Cambiaso Pallavicini Every palazzo is decorated with the owner’s coat of arms
Palazzo Nicolosio Lomellino – many palaces are decorated with beautiful frescos
Palazzo Doria with his beautiful gardens on the hillside
Courtyard of the Palazzo Doria Tursi
It is impossible to describe all the palaces here – you have to come and see for yourself. It will give you an impression of how much wealth was transferred from the Americas to Europe in the 16th and 17th century.