Proud and excellent Genoa

Petrarch called it La Superba (meaning both "The Proud" and "The Excellent"), while Rubens and Wagner extolled it as an architectural marvel – yet today, Genoa is "a curiously unsung place", says Harriet O'Brien in the Independent. Sandwiched between the Apennines and the sea, the city was one of the great trading centres of the medieval world. Today, it is merely a busy Italian port, a place with a "gritty, no-nonsense air" that attracts few tourists. Its physical splendour is undiminished, however – the maze of medieval streets at its heart gives way to "Renaissance and Baroque grandeur" to the north, where the palaces of the Via Garibaldi, "a 16th century millionaire's row", house the city's principal art collection, the Musei di Strada Nuova.
British Airways (0844-493 0787) flies to Genoa from Gatwick. ·