Villas have been one of the pillars of the social and economic history of Genoa. Since the 14th century, the villa became the symbol of the power of the aristocratic oligarchy and the wealthy merchant bourgeoisie, for whom it was the mirror of the city palace: outside the walls they conveyed the luxury and magnificence found in the city residences.
In the Great Genoa area alone, there were more than two hundred and sixty villas, a multitude 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., from the Carige Foundation magazine, n. 4-2003
History
Origins The spread of suburban villas, which would characterize the Genoese landscape for centuries, began in the 13th century, when the first dwellings of wealthy citizens, linked to the presence of agricultural land, were built in suburban areas alongside the numerous monastic settlements. The oldest villas had a simple architectural structure and overlooked gardens, vegetable gardens and orchards enclosed by high walls with high porticoes.
Among the oldest (13th century) suburban residences is the one that belonged to Doge Simon Boccanegra on the hill of S. Tecla in San Martino, which has recently been renovated. Located today within the perimeter of the San Martino hospital complex, after years of neglect it was restored in 2005 and is now used as a venue for seminars and conferences.
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.
From the 16th to the 18th century 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.Corinna Praga, "Genova fuori le mura"Soprintendenza per i beni ambientali e architettonici - Genova, Censimento dei beni architettonici, edited by Gianni Bozzo
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.Touring Club Italiano, Guida d'Italia - Liguria, Milano, 2009 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."Storia della Liguria", by Giovanni Assereto and Marco Doria, Giuseppe Laterza & Figli, 2007
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. In particular, Sampierdarena between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became one of Italy's best-known holiday resorts.
A number of villas were also built on the outskirts of the city, in areas that were included in the city walls in the 17th century, but had previously been outside the city. An example is the Villa del Principe, built by Perin del Vaga at the beginning of the 16th century for Andrea Doria in Fassolo, just in front of the San Tommaso Gate, a symbol of the prince's supremacy in the political and economic life of Genoa; the park of the villa extended from the hill of Granarolo to the sea.
The construction of villas continued in the following centuries, reaching its peak in the seventeenth century. 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."Genova tra Ottocento e Novecento – Album storico-fotografico", vol. 1, a cura di M. Lamponi, Nuova Editrice Genovese, Genova, 2006
Alessandro Magnasco's art has left us a snapshot of the life and environment in which the wealthy society spent its vacations in the first half of the 18th century. In the painting Garden Party in Albaro (1735), preserved in Palazzo Bianco, one can see small groups of people in a garden (identified as that of Villa Saluzzo Bombrini in Albaro), talking, dancing and playing cards, against the backdrop of the Bisagno plain, in the area of San Fruttuoso, which was still cultivated with vegetable gardens. This villa in Albaro, known to the Genoese as Villa Paradiso, was the residence of Fabrizio de André as a young man. Many of his early ballads were written and first sung in a small room on the ground floor that the singer had chosen as his "den".
At the end of the 18th century, the interest in botany spread among the most educated aristocrats and led many of them to introduce exotic plants from all over the world in their gardens, giving rise to the first botanical gardens. In the Genoa area, the most famous are the one founded by Ippolito Durazzo on the bastion of Santa Caterina (today Villetta Di Negro) and the one founded by Clelia Durazzo Grimaldi in Pegli, today integrated in the park of the Villa Durazzo-Pallavicini, built in the 19th century by Ignazio Pallavicini.
In the same period, many buildings from previous centuries were adapted to the neoclassical and pre-romantic style, mainly by Emanuele Andrea Tagliafichi, a famous landscape architect of the time, who also oversaw the transformation of the parks of many villas to the new trend, such as Villa Lomellini Rostan in Multedo, Villa Rosazza in the San Teodoro district, and Villa Gropallo dello Zerbino (where Ippolito Durazzo moved his botanical garden).
The era of the sumptuous summer residences of the patrician families ended with the arrival of Napoleon in Italy and the end, in 1797, of the Republic of Genoa, which was renamed the Ligurian Republic and effectively came under the control of Republican France, leading to the decline of the aristocratic society immortalized by Magnasco's art.
19th and 20th centuries The wealthy entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, which became the new ruling class in the nineteenth century, had elegant villas built, especially in the eastern part and on the heights of the historic center, but they did not reach the splendor of the patrician villas, although there were exceptions. One of them is the park of Villa Durazzo-Pallavicini in Pegli, designed by Michele Canzio for the Marquis Ignazio Pallavicini. Open to the public from the beginning, it was an extraordinary success among its contemporaries.
Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the neo-Gothic buildings are noteworthy, such as the D'Albertis Castle, built by a group of architects under the direction of Alfredo d'Andrade, the Mackenzie Castle and the Bruzzo Castle in the Castelletto area, the Canali Gaslini villa on Corso Italia, and the Turke Castle on the promontory of Santa Chiara, on the border between Albaro and Sturla, all designed by Gino Coppedè in his own personal style inspired by Florentine Gothic.
During the same period, the historic villas, too large for the new needs, were divided into apartments or given to religious communities, in most cases losing their gardens to subdivisions and urban sprawl; the few that remained are now public parks.
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, opposed in vain by the last representatives of the aristocracy associated with them.A. Gazzola, "La città policentrica: il caso di Genova", in "Dalla città diffusa alla città diramata", FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2003 The villas themselves were often incorporated into the productive fabric as office and storage buildings, and in many cases suffered irreversible degradation.
In the twentieth century, subdivisions, real estate speculation and changes of use led to the disappearance of many historic villas and the complete abandonment of others. 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.
Historic villas This section lists many of the most important historic villas for historical or architectural reasons included in the territory of the Municipality of Genoa. Most of the existing villas are listed as worthy of preservation by the Regional Directorate for Cultural and Environmental Heritage of Liguria.
Villas in the historic center The suburban villas in Genoa's historic center were built in the sestieri of San Teodoro and San Vincenzo, which were outside the city walls before the construction of the "New Walls" in the 17th century. In the Castelletto area (formerly part of the sestiere of San Vincenzo), there are also some buildings from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.