The Mediterranean by Grant Allen

Early history -- Old fortifications -- The rival of Venice -- Changes of twenty-five years -- From the parapet of the Corso -- The lower town -- The Genoese palazzi -- Monument to Christopher Columbus -- The old Dogana -- Memorials in the Campo Santo -- The Bay of Spezzia -- The Isola Palmeria -- Harbor scenes.

Genova la Superba -- Genoa the Proud -- an epithet not inappropriate for this city of merchant princes of olden days, which was once the emporium of the Tyrrhenian, as was Venice of the Adriatic sea, and the rival of the latter for the commerce of the Eastern Mediterranean. No two cities, adapted to play a similar part in history, could be more unlike in their natural environments: Venice clustered on a series of mud banks, parted by an expanse of water from a low coast-line, beyond which the far-away mountains rise dimly in the distance, a fleet, as it were, of houses anchored in the shallows of the Adriatic; Genoa stretching along the shore by the deepening water, at the very feet of the Apennines, climbing up their slopes, and crowning their lower summits with its watch-towers.