GENOA (jen'o-a) (ancient Genua), a city of Italy, situated on the Gulf of Genoa, at the foot of the Apennines, the capital of the province and the most important seaport; 801 miles S. E. of Paris. In a nine-mile circuit it rises like an amphitheater of churches, palaces and houses. The streets are lined with tall buildings, some of them of marble and handsome architecture, but now in many cases hotels or business places. Of the palaces the most famous are the ducal palace formerly inhabited by the doges, and the Doria, presented in 1529 to the great Genoese citizen Andrea Doria, whose residence it was during his presi dency of the republic. The palaces Brignole-Sale, Reale, Durazzo-Pallavi cini, Spinola, Balbi-Senarega, and others possess great interest on account of their historical fame and architectural beauty. Many of them contain galleries of paint ings; the Brignole Sale has works by Van Dyck, Rubens, Albrecht Diirer, Paolo Veronese, Guercino, etc. Among the churches are the cathedral of St. Lorenzo, a grand old pile in the Italian Gothic style; the church of St. Ambrogio (1589), containing pictures by Guido Reno and Rubens; the church of St. Stefano, containing an altarpiece by Giulio Romano; L'Annunziata, splendid inside with marbles and rich gilding. The marble municipal palace, built in the Late Renaissance style, and the palace of the Dogana must also be mentioned.
Genoa has a university, founded in 1243, a library of 116,000 volumes; also nu merous technical schools. The hospital, the asylum for the poor (capacity 2,200), the deaf and dumb institution, and the hospital for the insane are among the finest institutions of their kind in Italy. There are numerous excellent philan thropic foundations, as the Fieschi, an asylum for female orphans. The public library contains over 50,000 volumes; and there are the Academy of Fine Arts, founded (1751) by the Doria family; the Carlo Felice Theater, one of the finest in Italy; and the Verdi Institute of Music. There is a fine monument to Columbus by Lanzio (1862).
Genoa is the commercial outlet of a wide extent of country, of which the chief exports are rice, wine, olive oil, silk goods, coral, paper, macaroni, and marble. The imports are principally raw cotton, wheat, sugar, coal, hides, coffee, raw wool, fish, petroleum, iron, machin ery, and cotton and woolen textiles. The principal industries are iron works, cot ton and cloth mills, macaroni works, tanneries, sugar refineries, and vesta match, filigree, and paper factories. Pop. commune, about 300,000; province, pop. 1,120,000.