DAY TRIP
Genoa, the capital of Liguria, has the second busiest port and is the sixth largest city in Italy. One of the most beautiful cathedrals if found here. The Duomo di Genova or Cattedrale di San Lorenzo was consecrated in 1118. Updated and embellished through the centuries, today it is famous for its almost two bell towers, a catchy façade, Gothic portals and stunning marble decorations.
The horizontal white and black marble stripes that the Cathedral still features nowadays are a characteristic symbol of nobility often used in the Middle Age architecture. The impressive “deep” portals are the work of the French masters invited some decades later, in the beginning of the XIII century, to stylistically convert Duomo into a Gothic Cathedral. Instead, the asymmetric façade including two unequal towers, are a result of a further project. The left bell tower started by Giovanni da Gandria was never completed. Instead, it was simply crowned in 1477 by an elegant loggia. On the other hand, the second tower on the right is a true 60-meters-high Bell Tower realized in 1522 by Pietro Carlone da Osteno. Finally, the two giant lions that guard the steps of the church are the most recent Duomo’s addition dating back to 1840, and created by Carlo Rubatto.
Cathedral of Saint Lawrence is an unmissable testimony of the glorious past of La Superba (“The Proud One”), a city which nickname embodies Genoa’s architectural beauty and dominating economic, political and cultural power of the past centuries. A city inscribed in 2006 on the World Heritage List of UNESCO.
Maria Novozhilova
e-mail: novozhilovam.blog@gmail.com
twitter: @NovozhilovaM
Instagram: @mn.blog
