Genoa is an ancient Italian port with a thousand-year history.
The first port of Genova was located much more to the east than today: it was more or less where the Porto Antico is today (juxtaposed), and more precisely in the Mandraccio area.
There, along the coast, the first road system developed, a maze of streets and "vichi", a contraction of alleys. They were teeming with life: the comings and goings of sailors, merchants, money changers and artisans and the thousand smells and noises of a very active port.
From the sixteenth century in Genoa also developed "Strade", streets wide enough to allow a carriage to pass, a means of locomotion hitherto unknown to the Genoese and introduced in Genoa only when it became a very rich city of bankers, who rubbed in carriage between Piazza Fontane Marose and Via Balbi, where the streets of the new rich were concentrated, with their sumptuous residences.
