THE HISTORY

The first nucleus of the Palazzo, which is delimited by the marble epigraph which runs long the north face, was constructed and decorated to the orders of Andrea Doria (1466-1560) on earlier fourteenth - and fifteenth-century structures. Between 1521 and 1529, Andrea Doria had acquired, in the zone of Fassolo, outside the walled city, three contiguous properties, on which there were several buildings. Their structures were reused in the construction of a part of the ground floor of the new residence.

The definitive arrangement of the monumental complex, however, as can be seen in the engraving by Guidotti (ca. 1769), was due to the heir of the admiral, Giovanni Andrea I (1539-1606), who added the gallery to the west, the open corner loggias, the side service constructions and the small sea loggia, also completing the layout of the gardens. These extended from the sea as far as the top of the hill of Granarolo.

The evident lack of architectural homogeneity of the building, such as the irregularities of the façade and of the terraced portico on the south side, reflect the way this composite construction was built, as the work went on for about a century. It remains a unique example, however, in Renaissance Italian architecture.

The palace is characterized by a through atrium, from which starts the grand staircase giving access to the five-arched loggia, at the moment closed by a nineteenth-century glassed structure. It serves to link the two symmetrical apartments of the piano nobile, built ex novo at the time of Andrea and reserved respectively for the Prince (west side) and for his wife, Peretta Usodimare del Carretto (east side).

The date 1530, which appears at the centre of the ceiling of the atrium and in Roman numerals on the architrave of the portal between the loggia and the grand staircase, probably records the date of the completion of the architectural works, which was immediately followed by the start of the decoration. This ended in 1533, when the emperor Charles V was received triumphally at Genoa and entertained for twelve days in the princely residence of Fassolo.

It is not at present possible to attribute with certainty the architectural plan to a single artist, although the information transmitted to us in the Lives of Giorgio Vasari has a certain validity in the absence of documents. According to him, the architectural work was the responsibility of Pietro Buonaccorsi, known as Perin del Vaga, (Florence 1501 - Rome 1547), who was author of part of the palace erected by Andrea.

Perin was summoned to Genova in 1528 with the job of seeing to all the needs of the new princely court created by Andrea Doria. The Florentine artist began by designing the ephemeral triumphal arches erected in 1528 to celebrate the passage through the city of Charles of Hapsburg, on his way to Bologna to receive the imperial crown.

The decoration of the palace followed; it perhaps began with the panel in the great room to the east, which portrays Neptune calming the tempest after the shipwreck of Aeneas, painted in oils onto the wall and already illegible in the seventeenth century, being substituted by a scenographic trompe-l’oeil perspective, painted by Annibale Angelini in 1845. The homogeneity of the internal decoration was helped by the fact that only one artist directed; this was Perin, who carried out a large part of the frescoes and organized the work of a group of collaborators, among whom were his young brother-in-law, Luca Penni. Prospero Fontana and perhaps Domenico Zaga. Other painters mentioned in the records, actively rivalling Perin and only involved on the outside of the building (south façade), were Gerolamo da Treviso (1529), il Pordenone (1532) and Domenico Beccafumi. The sculptors and the moulders were more numerous, amongst whom were Silvio and Vincenzo Cosini, Giovanni da Fiesole, Luzio Formano, and perhaps Guglielmo della Porta and other Lombard artists.

In 1844-45 Annibale Angelini, an academic painter from Perugia who worked in other noble Genoese residences, was commissioned to restore the frescoes in the palace. The decoration of the palace is important both for the artistic quality and for the historical-political significance of the subjects. In the programme of glorification desired by Andrea Doria, the inevitability of the destiny to be great, linked both to the rise to glory of families and to individual capacities, culminates with the identification of the admiral with Neptune, god of the sea, raised to the same level of importance as Jupiter, who is striking the Giants with thunderbolts, as frescoed in the room on the west, a transparent allegory on the emperor Charles V, who punishes the rebels and heretics.

The Triumphs in the atrium allude to the Doria victories; the Heroes of the Loggia celebrate the civil virtues of the forebears, the Carità Romana the moral virtues of the patron. The private apartments, of four rooms each, are decorated with themes from mythology: heroic subjects alluding to personal virtues in the rooms of Andrea, and amorous stories, drawn from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, in the rooms of Peretta.

A colossal Neptune in stucco by Giovannangelo Montorsoli (Montorsoli 1507-Florence 1563) decorated the garden on the sea; this was destroyed and perhaps substituted by the monumental marble fountain with Neptune on a chariot (1599-1603), by Taddeo, Giuseppe and Batista Carlone, which still exists.

Montorsoli worked for the prince Doria between 1539 and 1542, and again in 1547, and was responsible for the celebratory statue of Andrea then placed in the Palazzo Ducale as well as the internal restructuring of the family church of San Matteo; to him is attributed the first organization of the garden at the time of Andrea. After the death of the prince in 1560, his heir, Giovanni Andrea, extended the palace with a series of works, making special use of the services of Giovanni Ponzello, court architect from 1576 to 1596. In 1566 new rooms were added on the west (architect Antonio Roderio?), and in 1577 Ponzello built the east wing and the service buildings which surround the garden.

In 1581 the marble artists Pier Antonio del Curto and Benedetto Matteo da Movi, executed the east portal, and in the same year was created the loggia on the sea. In 1594 Battista Cantone and Luca Carlone were obliged to construct, following the model “signed by the hand of Petro Serra”, the Gallery to the west, which was erected on a pre-existing building, and the through loggia on the corner with paired columns, similar to that already put up to the east. The four rooms added to the east still have the frescoes executed in 1599 by Marcelo Sparzo from Urbino (active 1565 - 1606).

Ponzello is also responsible for the definitive and monumental arrangement of the gardens on the sea and above the house. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the lower garden was structured in geometrical forms, with four-cornered beds disposed symmetrically around the Fountain of Neptune, and adorned with minor basins with statues. The upper garden was terraced and had at the level of the piano nobile a great trellis supported on columns, fountains, two frescoed casinos, and, on high, a large niche, with the gigantic Neptune in stucco by Marcello Sparzo (1586).

The construction of the Genoa-Turin railway line (1850-54) led to the total demolishment of the trellising and the excavation of part of the north garden, which was then irreparably destroyed by the construction of via Pagano Doria (1899), the Hotel Miramare (1913) and other residential buildings. To the south, the construction of the maritime station (1930) and the widening of via Adua (1935) conclusively put an end to the palace’s link with the sea, surrounding the building with a band of roads carrying intense traffic. Events during the war (the bombardment of 1944) did serious damage to the complex.

Today, the Princes Doria Pamphilj, owners of the palace, have opened their residence to the public, after important restoration works, some of which still continue.