THE CITY OF PALACES.
GENOA.—Streets of palaces, dingy and dirty with the mould of ages, but with interiors adorned with all the lavish luxury of the East, such is Genoa to the cursory view. The tourist, rushing through the Cathedral and the Cemetery, his Murray in hand; hastily conning the names of old masters and then going away satisfied, does not begin to know his Genoa.
It is a city to linger in, to study slowly and lovingly, to muse over, in its deserted squares and sleepy parks. Certainly it is a famous introduction to Italian art. Every one knows it was called La Superba in the old days, so there is no need for me to do anything but jot down a few random memories of the place. Genoa, of course, is chiefly interesting on account of its past, not its present, but it may be as well to say that its capacious harbour accommodates steamers sailing daily to nearly every port in the Mediterranean and that in 1888 the total tonnage entered amounted to 3,000,000 tons. The lanterna or lighthouse in the harbour is old enough to be a curiosity, for it was built in 1547, and is apparently good for another couple of centuries. Near its foot are the dockyard and arsenal, which were established in 1276. But since 1860 the Italian government has made Spezia its chief dockyard, to the disgust of the Genoese.
The one wide modern street in Genoa is the Via Vittorio Emanuele, on which are all the good hotels. In every Italian city and village one meets this name, and a certain degree of monotony attaches to it after one has shopped in fifty or sixty such streets in as many towns; but it shows the popularity of the late king, Il Re Galant’uomo, as they still call him. The shops in this street in Genoa are Parisian in every way, and there is an indescribable air of cheerfulness and gayety as one moves along past crowds of handsome black-browed Italian women. This word comes involuntarily to one in thinking of Italian women or girls. They could never be called pretty, or even beautiful, with their dark, glowing skins, large, warm eyes, thick, perfectly-curved eyebrows, and a more or less faint down on the upper lip; but they are undeniably handsome.
Then, too, their way of walking out in afternoon or evening in full toilette and with perfectly-arranged coiffures, but without hat or bonnet, is attractive and gives a cosy air to the open street. Behind our hotel is a long, glass-covered arcade about the length of two city blocks, always filled with a gay, chattering crowd of both sexes, who promenade up and down, now stopping to look at the brilliantly-lighted window of some shop rich in statues and statuettes of Parian and Carrara marble, or to sit at small tables in front of some smart café to eat ices, or the Italian equivalent, granita.
This arcade is one of the sights of the city and forms one of the most attractive features of Genoa. One often thinks of the gay scenes enacted there nightly, when far away.
A walk about the town is delightful, provided one is unfettered by that abomination, a valet-de-place, or local guide. Such narrow streets running in all directions past grim palaces and squalid houses (but all of stone, for wood has no part in the internal economy of Genoese building) ending frequently in some odourous cul de sac, or doubling on themselves, to bring the helpless wanderer back to his starting point, after an hour’s walk!