The Palace and the City

The picture by Grasso, painted at the end of the sixteenth century, reproduces the official image of the city, produced in 1481 and today lost. At that date, Palazzo del Principe did not yet exist. The view therefore shows the buildings which, inside the quarter of Fassolo, occupied the land on which subsequently the palace was to be built: we know that between 1521 and 1529 Andrea Doria purchased three neighbouring properties (from the Giustiniani, Forneto and Lomellini families), and reused part of the of the existing structures, incorporating them into the ground floor of his palace.

Andrea Doria constructed his palace in a militarily strategic position. It faced the sea to the south, which meant that the Doria galleys could moor directly in front of the residence, and was protected behind by the hill of Granarolo; the palace is built just outside the city walls, next to the western entrance to the city, the Porta di San Tommaso.

The aerial photograph shows Palazzo del Principe in today’s urban context. The garden behind, which once reached to the top of the hill, was destroyed from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards to make way for the railway, for a residential quarter and for the great bulk of the Hotel Miramare (1913). To the south, the building of the new Stazione Marittima, the widening of Via Adua in the 1930s and, later, the construction of the Sopraelevata (flyover) in 1962-65 interrupted the link of the monumental building with the sea, surrounding it with a band of heavily used roads.

THE BOMBARDMENTS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

In 1944 both the palace and the southern garden underwent devastating bombardments by the Allies. The position of the monumental complex, near to objectives of obvious military importance, such as the railway, ensured that it was a likely target for damage; furthermore, erroneous information indicating it to the allies as the seat of the German headquarters (which in fact was in the Hotel Miramare nearby), meant that it was an objective of the first importance, and therefore hit repeatedly.

In the course of the bombardments, the sixteenth-century Fountain of Neptune was also hit; his was positioned in the centre of the garden and recomposed in the 1950s.