Open-air Market in Piazza Nunziata
Date: 1925

Photographic Archive of Genoa Municipality, inv. 4286

Description:

The photograph tells us when the peasant women and the farmers from Polcevera came down to the heart of the city to bring vegetables and fruits, with baskets, panniers and  mandilli, to Piazza Nunziata. It was 1925.

Borgo Lanaiuoli and Piazza Ponticello
Date: 1920

Photographic Archive of Genoa Municipality, inv. 12432

Description:
The urban transformations of the twentieth century marked the demolition of the medieval city, transforming places of sanguine residentiality into anemic spaces for the ruling class. Three scars of nostalgia on the line of Torbido river: Ponticello, 1930s; Piccapietra, 1950s; Madre di Dio, 1970s. Every twenty years a wound, a prophecy of a non-place. Here you can see Ponticello and Borgo Lanaiuoli, before the construction of Torre Piacentini, the tallest skyscraper in Europe for a few years.

Genoa: Southward Panorama
Date: end of the XIX century

Photographic Archive of Genoa Municipality, inv. s33150 Fondo Antico

Description:
The monumentality of the central station in Piazza Principe underlined by a neoclassical arch now removed ... Horse carriages waiting for the next passengers ... The Commenda of the Jerusalem knights in the background ...and the natural bastion of San Benigno which separated Genoa from the immediate western side of the city and closed the northern crown stretched between Righi and Peralto. The city leaned on the port like a cat curled up in the midday sun.

Child Portrait
Date: : end of the XIX century

Photographic Archive of Genoa Municipality, inv. s47568 Fondo Antico

Description:

Achille Testa, a prominent name in Genoa at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1927 Genoa Municipality approved the purchase of its Photographic Archive for 5000 lire (about 1000 negatives). In addition to the buildings of the city, the views of the harbor and the works of art, portraits are one of the photographer's fields of specialization. Many famous personalities of the upper middle class and celebrities recruited him to be immortalized. An original example of his portraits is the Child Portrait with its unusual framing inside an egg.

Rapallo: bobbin lace workers (tombolo)

Date: 1880 approx.
Object type and technique: negative on gelatine plate ; cm 24 x 30
Photographic Archive of Genoa Municipality, inv. 26950

Description:
One of the most characteristic professions of the East Riviera captured by the best known landscape photographer active in Genoa. The art of bobbin lace: a land of slow patience and women's hands and eyes, a source to improve the domestic income. It is an example of poor people knowledge destined to adorn the houses of the wealthy (or to embellish the wedding trousseau).

Peace Tower. Rapid and grateful physical and moral education Institute. Perspectival View.

Date: 1917

Topographic Collection of Genoa Municipality, inv. 4459

Description:
Visionary and breathtaking: this is the project of a futuristic Genoa conceived in the middle of the Great War, between old-fashion skyscrapers worthy of an East-Coast metropolis and flying cars swarming in the air over the Carignano seascape. Between belle époque and science fiction, Picasso tells us about a missed dream.

Genoa from the Santa Chiara Wall
Date: 1834

Topographic Collection of Genoa Municipality, inv. 3214

Description:

The covering of the Bisagno river and Genoa in the background seem to be permeated with stillness, such as the oil on the canvas with its subtle motifs. Castello tells of a suspended time, between the anxieties that marked the end of the ancien régime and the industrial impulse that would radically change the city in the following decades.

View of Palazzo del Principe a Fassolo Gardens from the San Tomaso Bastion

Date: Before 1849

Topographic Collection of Genoa Municipality, inv. 2203

Description:

Sepia and white lead technique to describe the Doria Palace and its gardens, among the Roman road and the sea, before the construction of the Circonvallazione a mare, the sopraelevata street,  the maritime station and the port, as we know it today. At the time, the area between San Teodoro and Fassolo was countryside next to the city.