old port of Genoa, Italy

photos and history of the ancient port of Genoa, Italy


A port that is evolving.
The history of the Old Port is a port that has followed the course of the innovations in the construction of ships and cargo handling, changing the coastline and port facilities, with constant adjustments and interventions.

Mandraccio, perhaps from Arabic, "shelter where you can stay safe": This reach into virtually a natural harbor, the story says that settled the first indigenous fishermen. Protected from winds and strategically located port of Genoa quickly became the hub of maritime trade with the entire Mediterranean.

Active since the fifth century BC, in the middle of traffic antiquity and during the Middle Ages, its primacy deepened and consolidated with the birth of the City in the era of the Crusades, and later in the '500: the "Century of the Genovesi ".

The development of port activities grew at high speed until the sixteenth century, when the discovery of the trades were diverted Atlantic. A new period of maritime expansion was favored by the construction of the new port in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and the subsequent significant expansions in 1919 and 1945.

In recent decades the port traffic have moved more and more towards the western city and the old area has remained unused in fact, until the restructuring of 1992 for the Columbus Celebration has not physically reconnected to the city, restoring the central role and driving through the city.