Explorer Gênes

Piazza De Ferrari is the main square of Genoa, named after the banker Raffaele De Ferrari, Duke of Galliera. At its centre is a bronze fountain designed by Giuseppe Crosa di Vergagni in 1936. The Teatro Carlo Felice, the Accademia Ligustica, a side of the Doge's Palace and early 20th-century bank buildings frame it.

The Doge's Palace was the seat of the doges of the Republic of Genoa from the 14th century. After a fire in 1777, Simone Cantoni rebuilt its central block with a neoclassical marble facade on Piazza Matteotti. It is now a cultural centre with art exhibitions, talks and the Grimaldina Tower with its former prison cells.

Christopher Columbus House is an 18th-century reconstruction of the house where Columbus lived as a boy, between about 1455 and 1470, on Vico Dritto di Ponticello just outside Porta Soprana. His father Domenico, a wool weaver, had his workshop on the ground floor. The City of Genoa bought the house in 1887 and runs it as a small museum.

Genoa Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Lawrence and consecrated in 1118, is the seat of the Archbishop of Genoa. Its Gothic west front of the early 13th century is banded in black and white stone, and the dome is by Galeazzo Alessi. Inside lies a British naval shell that struck the nave in February 1941 and did not explode.

Palazzo San Giorgio, by the old harbour, was built from 1257 to 1260 as the seat of Genoa's civil government and later housed the Bank of Saint George. Marco Polo was held prisoner here after 1298. Its sea-facing front is painted with Saint George and Genoese notables; the port authority works inside, so visitors see the exterior.

Palazzo Rosso is a red-fronted palace on Via Garibaldi, built in 1675 for the Brignole Sale family. In 1874 the last heir, Maria Brignole Sale, Duchess of Galliera, left it and its collection to the city. Part of the Musei di Strada Nuova, it shows rooms frescoed by Gregorio De Ferrari and Domenico Piola and paintings by Van Dyck, Guercino and Veronese.

The Royal Palace of Genoa on Via Balbi was begun in 1618 for the Balbi family, enlarged by the Durazzo family and sold to the House of Savoy in 1823. Now a state museum, it keeps furnished state rooms such as the Hall of Mirrors and the throne room, with paintings by Van Dyck, Tintoretto and Guercino and sculpture by Filippo Parodi.

Galata Museo del Mare is a maritime museum in the Palazzo Galata on the Darsena, where the galleys of the Republic of Genoa were once built. Opened in 2004, it covers five levels and 31 rooms on seafaring from the 15th century to today, with a full-size galley, Columbus and emigration sections, and the submarine Nazario Sauro moored outside.

The Lighthouse of Genoa, known as La Lanterna, is the working light of the port: a 76-metre masonry tower in two square sections, rebuilt in its present form in 1543. Visitors walk a waterfront path with an open-air museum, see a museum of lighthouse lenses and city views in the old fortress at its foot, and climb to the first terrace.