Genoa hides its art behind unmarked palace doors. Three days of Rolli piano nobile frescoes, Van Dyck portraits painted for the families who commissioned them, Paganini's Cannone violin and contemporary galleries in vaulted caruggi cellars.
A 16th-century Rolli palace left as the Spinola family furnished it: mirrored gallery, Antonello da Messina's Ecce Homo, Van Dyck's four Evangelists. Tue–Sat 08:30–19:30, Sun 13:30–19:30, closed Mon. Entry €6, combined with Palazzo Reale €10.
Jesuit church whose side chapels hold two Rubens altarpieces — the Circumcision and St Ignatius' Miracles — plus Guido Reni's Assumption. Free entry, roughly 07:30–12:00 and 16:00–19:00; the trompe-l'œil dome repays a long look upward.
Savoy royal palace with an intact Hall of Mirrors, Van Dyck's Crucifixion and a hanging garden over the harbour. Tue–Wed 09:00–14:00, Thu–Sun 13:30–19:00. Entry €10; the mirrored ballroom and Baroque stucco are the strongest survivals in the city.
Admiral Andrea Doria's 1529 seaside villa, frescoed by Perino del Vaga with the Fall of the Giants, hung with Flemish tapestries and fronted by a restored Italianate garden. Open daily 10:00–18:00, entry €12 with audioguide.
Genoa's town hall houses Niccolò Paganini's 1743 Guarneri del Gesù 'Il Cannone', shown in a climate case beside his letters and guitar. Tue–Fri 09:00–18:30, Sat–Sun 09:30–18:30. Included in the €9 Musei di Strada Nuova ticket.
Confectioner since 1780 with its original 1814 shop fittings — walnut cabinets, mirrored panels, hand-blown jars of candied violets and rosolio. A functioning museum of Genoese bourgeois taste rather than a museum piece.
Deconsecrated 13th-century Augustinian convent holding Genoese sculpture, including Giovanni Pisano's fragments of the tomb of Margaret of Brabant (1313). Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00, entry €5, cloisters open to walk.
Rebuilt by Aldo Rossi in 1991 behind Carlo Barabino's 1828 neoclassical portico — a stage tower like a lighthouse over a hall of stone-clad 'street' walls. Opera and symphony season runs October to June; gallery seats from about €20.
Genoa's contemporary art museum in a Carignano villa: post-war abstraction, the Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli collection and a strong artist's-book archive. Tue–Fri 09:00–19:00, weekends from 10:00, entry €5, with a terraced park below.
A pastel-house cove absorbed into the city but still working: boats hauled onto the shingle, nets on the wall, painters at easels along Via Aurora. Ligurian ochre and rose facades follow an old harbour-town colour code.
1851 hillside necropolis where Genoese merchant families commissioned marble realism — Monteverde's Angel, the Casella and Piaggio tombs, Oneto family group. Daily 07:30–17:00, free; bus 34 from Piazza Corvetto takes 20 minutes.
Trading since 1810 and claimed as Italy's oldest continuously running bookshop: Ligurian local history, maritime charts and antiquarian prints, with the original shelving and a reading room used by Genoese writers.