Palazzo Reale

Genoa's only royal residence began as a merchant banker's mansion on the Via Balbi. Bought by the Savoy dynasty in the 1820s and passed to the state a century later, Palazzo Reale keeps its Hall of Mirrors, throne room and picture gallery of Van Dyck, Veronese and Tintoretto above terraced gardens over the port.

Why it matters

Every other grand house of Genoa belonged to merchant aristocracy; this is the one palace where kings actually lived. The project was presented by Stefano Balbi on 4 February 1643 for a site facing the church of San Carlo on the new street his family was opening, and the first phase was finished around 1650 by the architects Pier Francesco Cantone and Michele Moncino, with Giovanni Angelo Falcone joining later. The building entered the Republic's famous Rolli registers at category two, the ranked list of houses from which the state drew lodgings for visiting dignitaries, and it carries number 30 in today's UNESCO catalogue of the Strade Nuove palaces.

What makes the palace unusual is the completeness of its survival. Because the Savoy furnished it as a working residence rather than stripping it, the state museum now presents original tapestries, furniture, porcelain and decor in situ, alongside a picture gallery of remarkable depth.

What to notice

The climax of the route is the Galleria degli Specchi, the Hall of Mirrors. Around 1705 the Durazzo family brought the Roman architect Carlo Fontana to Genoa, and he rebuilt the atrium, added the monumental staircases and a terrace facing the sea, and transformed the long gallery into a mirror hall openly modelled on Versailles and the Roman palazzi. Look upward as you walk it: the palace's baroque fresco decoration enlisted leading Genoese hands that the UNESCO portal lists for the building, among them Giovanni Battista Carlone and Valerio Castello, and in the adjoining Chapel Gallery Lorenzo de Ferrari painted monochrome scenes around 1734, including a Rape of Helen conceived to imitate sculptural groups in a niche.

The picture gallery rewards slow looking, with paintings attributed to Veronese, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, Guercino, Luca Giordano, Rubens, Ferdinand Voet and the Bassano workshop. The Savoy rooms include the Throne Room and the ballroom created under Carlo Alberto after 1831, and the palace lies close enough to the waterfront that its terraces were designed to watch arrivals in the port.

Context and history

The building's chain of owners reads like a history of Genoa itself. The Balbi sold on within a generation: after two years with the Grillo family in the late 1670s it passed to the Durazzo, whose expansions and art patronage gave the palace its Roman-scale staircase and mirror gallery. Napoleon slept here as a guest in 1805, and when the Genoese branch of the Durazzo ended in 1809 the house drifted toward sale. The House of Savoy concluded its purchase in 1823 after years of negotiation, and Carlo Felice ordered the works that made it a genuine royal seat, continued under Carlo Alberto; from then it served the kings of Sardinia and later Italy, hence the name Royal Palace. In 1919 Vittorio Emanuele III relinquished it to the state, which transferred it to the Ministry of Education on 30 April 1920; it now forms part of the Musei Nazionali di Genova.