The story
A young Genoese noblewoman, Caterina Balbi Durazzo, looks out from a portrait by Anthony van Dyck, painted in the 1620s, when the Flemish painter spent several years working for Genoa's great banking families. Her two family names are also the names of the first two families to own the palace where she now hangs.
The Balbi, a dynasty of financiers, began the building in 1643 on Via Balbi, the street their family had laid out, and finished it around 1650. Later in the century it passed to the Durazzo, who enlarged it and eventually decorated its best-known room, the Gallery of Mirrors, modelled on the galleries of Roman palaces and on Versailles. In 1824 King Charles Felix of Sardinia, of the House of Savoy, bought it as a royal residence, which is why it is called the Royal Palace. The Savoys added a throne room, an audience hall and a ballroom, and in 1919 King Victor Emmanuel III handed the palace over to the Italian state.
Today visitors walk through the furnished royal apartments, past more than 100 paintings, with works by Tintoretto, Guercino and Luca Giordano. Van Dyck is represented a second time by a large Christ on the Cross, and the palace's hanging garden looks out toward the harbour.
