The Genoese had settled in Cembalo (Balaklava), on the Crimean coast, from at least 1344. The possession of the colony lasted, almost continuously, until the City’s fall in 1475. The plaque recalls that at the fall of Constantinople, new works of fortification were initiated which  would  come to define the appearance of the colony.
Mounted on one of the towers, the plaque was removed by the Italian Bersaglieri in 1855, during the Crimean War; General Alfonso La Marmora then donated it to Genoa.

In the eighteenth century, compared to the preceding two centuries, the eastern Mediterranean was no longer a hostile coast. Trade and commerce resumed, even if the “Sublime Porte” tended to favour a secular ally: France.

Although in decline, the Ottoman empire still dominated various European “peoples” who had not yet recognized themselves as sovereign states: but nationalism smouldered amidst the ashes and it would not be long before it exploded. Among them the Greeks.

Instruments for measuring the height of the stars were in use before the discovery of the method for identifying longitude through the coordinated measurement of the stars and the on-board clock. However, this discovery reinforced the need for instruments of ever greater precision and greater skilll  in the officer's ability to read it correctly.
Octants were complex instruments and required skill and experience. They did not easily establish themselves in Italy: they were very expensive and captains often bought them abroad and second-hand. As personal property of the naval officer, they were often passed from father to son, so that it is sometimes possible to reconstruct the history of the owners. The octant exhibited is the most precious of the collection, also thanks to the information that allows us to trace its full history.

Livorno in the eighteenth century was still a major Italian port, though less than in the period between the end of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, when it had been Liguria’s leading port. Two main characteristics encouraged its development: the willingness to accept merchants from ethnic and religious minorities (Jews, Armenians, practicing Muslims) and the development of the "Portofranco" (entrepot), that is the possibility to store goods without incurring customs duties while waiting to resell them to foreign markets.

The model is a reconstruction of the cutter –  a fast boat, with a single mast - with which the Genoese privateer Giuseppe Bavastro, friend and collaborator of the French general Massena, managed to breach the naval blockade that the British had placed around Genoa in 1800.

The model presents in precise detail the rigging that made it extraordinarily fast, as well as some interesting details such as the horizontal windlass. The cutter was a vessel typical of the British navy, used specifically in pursuit of corsairs. It was not a popular vessel in Liguria, where instead a similar boat - the bovo - was used, though, rigged with Latin sails.

At the time of sailing ships, this device was used to estimate the route sailed.

A wooden tablet on which the compass rose was either painted or engraved, the rhombuses (the 32 reference directions) each bore a series of eight holes. During the 4-hour watch, at the end of every half hour (measured with an hourglass), the helmsman inserted a peg in one of the holes in the rhombus corresponding to the direction of the ship's wake (read on the compass); a second peg noted the average speed, measured with the ship’s “log”.

The recording device was used for the "handover" between sailors who were often illiterate. The pilots would later reconstruct the daily route and record the data on the navigation plan, in order to record and correct the inevitable deviations from the planned route.

Algiers, although under foreign dominion since ancient times, to the Romans, the Byzantines and subsequently to the Arabs, has always preserved its Berber identity, even in the context of the Islamic community. Infact in 1529, after two centuries of Spanish occupation of the island of Penon, which overlooks the city, the inhabitants freed themselves and declared their allegiance to the Ottoman Empire, of which they became the western military outpost.

From the first half of the fourteenth century, the Venetians found themselves on the front line facing the expansion of the Ottoman Turks.

Venice which had, since the Fourth Crusade (1204), gained possession from the Byzantine Empire  of numerous islands in the Ionian and Aegean, now found itself losing them one by one.

There were seven Turkish-Venetian wars. The last - fought between 1714 and 1718 - marked the definitive cession of Dalmatia to Venice by an Ottoman Empire in decline.

The island of Tabarca is located a short distance off the coast of Tunisia. The painting is a “twin” to another depiction of the same island seen from the north. In 1540 the Bey of Tunis gave the island in concession to the Lomellini family and it is their flag that is shown flying over the castle.

The family was part of Andrea Doria's circle, and the concession was probably the ransom paid for the liberation of the Turkish pirate Dragut, captured in 1540 by Giannettino Doria, grandson of Andrea Doria.

The Lomellini colonized Tabarca, transferring a group of Genoese from Pegli (then a village near the city), with the aim of exploiting its  huge coral resources. The community continued to live on the island until 1738, when with the approval of King Carlo Emanuele III of Savoy they moved to the Sardinian island of Carloforte. The oldest Genoese dialect is still spoken there