Among sailors and pilgrims in the heart of Genoa - Part I.

A marvelous natural amphitheater overlooking Italy's most important port and welcoming the traveler with a breathtaking spectacle of colorful houses, sea, hills, steep creuze (narrow alleys) that brush past ancient chapels, lavish buildings, boats and ships arriving from all parts of the world: here is a first image of Genoa, historically known as "La Superba", for eight centuries the heart of a powerful maritime republic and today an important city of art and a destination for international tourists. Arriving here, especially from the fog-shrouded plain or from some city steeped in winter smog, is like a jolt of light, warmth and poetry. A single ray of sunshine is enough for the colorful houses to light up like so many pieces of a rainbow, and as you stroll through the evocative Porto Antico (Old Port) it is inevitable that the now legendary songs of Fabrizio De Andre echo in our ears.

Visiting Genoa is a great journey within the journey. From the exciting interactive exhibits of the Galata Museo del Mare, the largest maritime museum in the Mediterranean, we travel to the Tropics, but also to Antarctica, passing through the depths of the Mediterranean Sea and the colors of the coral reef, thanks to as many as fifteen thousand very curious animals - fish, marine mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds - that we can admire in the seventy tanks of the Aquarium. The Natural History Museum, founded in 1867 by the famous explorer and naturalist Giacomo Doria, holds an invaluable zoological heritage made up of more than 4.5 million specimens from every latitude.

The display of six thousand specimens is also much appreciated by the youngest explorers, who can take part in a great many educational activities, including the Night at the Museum: an evening devoted to games and workshops, animal masks, nature stories and then everyone off to sleep in a sleeping bag, under the watchful gaze of the fossil skeleton of the colossal ancient Elephant. From the port, crossing Piazza Caricamento, we reach the Sottoripa, where Italy's oldest public arcades are found, built between 1125 and 1133. We also venture into the caruggi of the ancient medieval quarter and then, following via San Lorenzo, we arrive at the cathedral of the same name, erected on the spot where, according to legend, Saint Lawrence and Pope Sixtus II, on their way to Spain, were hosted in a house.

After the saint's killing, a chapel and then a small church arose in the area in his memory, while the splendid cathedral, with its facade striped in white and black in the typical Ligurian style, was consecrated in 1118, with the work not yet finished. In reality the religious building remained incomplete: according to the original design it was to have had two bell towers, but because of the architect's death, the left one was never completed. Inside the three-nave church one can admire numerous marvelous frescoes and other works of art from every era. Continuing up the hill, we reach Porta Soprana, which in medieval times was the main gateway to the city. A few meters away from its two elegant towers, we visit the house-museum of Christopher Columbus, within whose walls the future navigator lived in his youth, between 1455 and 1470.

They tell us that the modest house, probably destroyed during the 1684 bombing of Genoa by the Sun King, was rebuilt in the 18th century. The construction of the splendid Palazzo Ducale, on the other hand, is linked to important Genoese military victories (against Pisa in 1284 and against Venice in 1298). Restored for the 1992 Colombiadi, it today hosts major art exhibitions. After admiring the adjoining Piazza De Ferrari, the city's main square, we decide to take a stroll among the caruggi, slipping into a characteristic alley right in front of the Palazzo Ducale. After a few steps we are in Piazza delle Erbe, considered the hub of Genoa's nightlife.

Above the 17th- and 18th-century houses rises the bell tower, an octagonal lantern tower decorated with friezes and with a double order of two- and three-light windows, of the beautiful church of San Donato, the most significant example of Genoese Romanesque dating back to the 12th century.