Abstract
Reviewed by: Carrie Beneš, New College of Florida, USA
On his website, Nicholas Walton describes Genoa, ‘La Superba’ as ‘a story involving prostitutes, slaves, pirates, footballers, chocolate makers, flower sellers, transsexuals, explorers and the Black Death’. This is actually a solid description of both the book’s considerable scope and its affectionate yet clear-eyed approach to the city of Genoa and its history. The book is both a popular history and a travelogue or personal memoir in the ‘Anglophone abroad’ genre (a venerable Italian tradition, from Tobias Smollett to Tim Parks). Walton – formerly a journalist with the BBC World Service and communications director for the European Council on Foreign Relations – accomplishes a remarkable feat in combining the two to create a book that feels like a meandering stroll and a roller-coaster ride at the same time.
Walton begins with the panoramic view of the city and its dramatic mountain coastline obtainable from the approach of planes landing at Genoa’s airport, and Genoa ‘La Superba’ is driven more by topography than chronology – appropriately, since so much of Genoese history has been driven by the exigencies of its landscape. Yet within this framework, the book offers a fascinating, wide-ranging account of Genoese history from the fall of Rome to the present day, which Walton characterizes as ‘a glorious history but not always a pleasant one’ (11). His approach is journalistic in that he often uses a particular place or person as a window into larger phenomena; for example, Genoa’s shipbuilding yards lead into a general account of the city’s role in the age of steam and Italian emigration, while the enormous Albergo dei Poveri near Stazione Brignole, named for the Albergo’s founder, anchors a discussion of early modern Genoese charity, record-keeping and public infrastructure (and following that, the problem of monumental preservation in the present day). While the history is more thematic than strictly chronological, it is largely accurate, and the topics around which Walton organizes his narrative seem organic rather than forced. As a historian, I often wondered where he had gotten a particularly juicy titbit – the largest number of footnotes in a single chapter is six – but I never felt that he was misreporting or twisting the evidence to suit a personal or rhetorical agenda.
Walton explicitly offers the book as a corrective to the tendency by scholars, authors and tourists to neglect Genoa in favour of the more familiar Florence, Rome and Venice (historically, Genoa’s great rival). As he notes, ‘Genoa is not part of the easily-digestible theme-park Italy of tourist menus, fancy dress centurions, and obvious photo opportunities’ (5); in fact, ‘other cities seem to dwell on the past almost too much, while Genoa could do with recognizing its own past rather more’ (201). In its attempt to convey the city’s idiosyncrasies, the book is in many ways a high-wire act, balancing a landscape of vertiginous mountains, tiny alleyways, and concrete eyesores (e.g., the elevated highway erected in the 1960s right through the middle of the old port) with a history of great triumphs (the First Crusade, the career of Andrea Doria) and catastrophes (the Black Death, the sinking of the Andrea Doria). Walton does this particularly well with Genoa’s population, treating with respect both its scions (centuries-old families such as the Doria and Grimaldi) and its ever-present marginal populations (port scavengers and transsexual prostitutes); he also recognizes the importance of Genoese non-natives such as William ‘Guglielmo’ Garbutt, vitalizing force and manager of Genoa CFC in the early twentieth century, in forming Genoa’s unique character.
Walton’s connection to Genoa came about through living there for a number of years with his Genoese wife and their child, so his outlook is that of a native as well as the more anthropological perspective of a foreigner intrigued by why others act the way they do, and how the weight of history affects both people and place. The book ends on an ambiguous note as Walton acknowledges local versions of the challenges facing so many Italian and European cities these days – immigration and emigration, corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency – but, as he says, ‘there are enough books of this type around already’ (201), and he prefers to focus on Genoa’s extraordinary but underappreciated past. Walton has an enviable talent for the evocation of character and landscape, and his writing is engaging. (For example, he describes Liguria as ‘a mountainous slug that sits over the lid of the Mediterranean like the moustache on the cruel top lip of a South American dictator’ (5).) While the book is probably too impressionistic for classroom use, it is an engrossing read on a deserving and under-served topic. Walton’s affection for the place and its people comes through clearly, and his account of Genoa’s key role in the history of Italy, the Mediterranean, and beyond is popular history done well.