Genoa
a city that looks to the future being in the meantime so rich of history as you can see from its historical center - one of the bigger in Europe - its patrician villas, its monuments, its medieval heart that will lead you back to the Holy Graal - treasured in the San Lorenzo Basilica - its Acquario , the biggest in Europe!
The next time that Italy will have this opportunity will only be in 2019!

History
The sea and the city have had, since pre-Roman times, a leading role in the history of Genoa, determinating commercial relationships with the Phoenicians and Greeks.
From the XI century, Genoa asserts itself as one of the great naval powers in the Mediterranean. The Genoese markets penetrate as far as China and establish commercial links with the powers of that era. The Republic of Genoa progressively extends its domain over the whole of Liguria and Corsica and in particular imposes itself - competing with the other Marine Republics - as one of the main ports of the western Mediterranean.
In 1528 the alliance between the Doge Andrea Doria and the Spanish Emperor Charles V sees the start of the so-called Golden Century of Genoa, characterised by the extraordinary flourishing of Genoese financial investments all over Europe and the construction, in the city, of splendid houses and noble palaces.

The age-old habit the Genoese people have for independence, finds expression in some of the most important figures of the Italian Risorgimento: Mazzini, Mameli, Garibaldi. Indeed the expedition of the One Thousand, which was to bring about the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, departed from Genoa.
The great urban development (with the doubling of the population between the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries), and the role of maritime pole and great industrial city starting from the mechanical establishment of Ansaldo, where the first locomotives and iron ships in Italy were built, were due to the renewed importance of the port in the general picture of Italy as a monarchy.

The City today.
Today, at the start of the third Millennium, Genoa has currently about 650,000 inhabitants and it is once again the most important port in the Mediterranean, the place of commercial and industrial activities, but also the point of arrival and passing point for tourism.