Walls of Genoa

The Italian city of Genoa, chief town of Liguria and ancient capital of the Republic of Genoa, during its long history had been defended by walls. To this day, large portions of these walls remain, and Genoa has more and longer walls than any other city in Italy. The main city walls are known as “Ninth century walls”, "Barbarossa Walls" (12th century), "Fourteenth century walls", "Sixteenth century walls" and "New Walls" (17th century).

In Roman times the original centre of Genoa, on the Sarzano hill, may have been defended by a wall, but there is no archaeological or documentary evidence of its existence.

The first known city walls were built in the 9th century, when thanks to Berengar II of Italy the city gained a wide autonomy, with subsequent economic development and population increase. The first walls, which included Sarzano hill, had three gates (the Serravalle gate, at the north side of the church of San Lorenzo, another on the hill of Saint Andrew, near the site of the future Porta Soprana and another one at the end of “Via Canneto il curto”, near the church of San Peter).

The settlement enclosed by the walls and the coastline occupied about twenty-two hectares. Some small settlements (housing mainly workmen and artisans), which had grown around churches, monasteries and feudal palaces, remained outside the walls.

In 1155 the defensive wall was extended to north-west to include also the new settlements out of the walls. The walls culminated on the top of St. Andrew hill, with Porta Soprana.

The new walls greatly expanded the area contained in it, compared to the previous one, including an area of 55 hectares.

The construction of the walls dragged until 1163: in that year, due to the international political situation, and particularly the relations with emperor Frederick Barbarossa led to an acceleration of work, as Caffaro vouched for, and in fifty-three days the works were completed, thanks to the effort of the entire population.

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