Here I am, in another city and again writing about Christopher Columbus. In some parts of the world, this makes sense. He is buried, after all, split between Seville (from which he embarked on his famous 1492 voyage) and Santo Domingo (click here to read all about that). His life took him to several other places, some of which would make sense for retrospectives about the man. And other places, like Columbus, Ohio make no sense at all; ol’ Chris never saw or even heard of the place, and the honor of its naming is due to a now-debunked myth of greatness.
Well, Genoa is another city from which it is apropos to write about Christopher Columbus. He was born here, and it is the seafaring Genoese Republic that gave him his start.
Before we get into Columbus’ story from Genoa, it is worth mentioning my own personal opinions of the man, so that I don’t need to rehash them later on. He was a slaver, a mass murderer, an egotistical maniac who – even in the context of the times in which he lived – was such a bad man that he was recalled to Spain and stripped of his post in the New World due to his treatment of the native populations. Add to that the fact that his navigation calculations were way off, and one finds a person who was an overall net negative to the world, and by a considerable margin. Hero worship of him can be – for the most part – divided in modern days into two camps: those ignorant of his life in actuality, and those who believe wiping out and enslaving natives is a good thing. I wouldn’t want to be associated with either group.
And yet, despite his monstrous life, there is no question that Christopher Columbus is historically significant, and worth talking about. As long as one does so in context. So here I am again, this time in Genoa, writing of the life of a toad of a human.
Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa in 1451, during the early part of the city-state’s true golden age. We don’t know his exact date of birth, but it is believed to be sometime in the fall. He and his family – parents, three brothers, and a sister – lived in a small house just outside the medieval city walls and the Porta Soprana gate. His father was a wool weaver, and the bottom floor of the home was probably some sort of a store front.
In his writings later in life, Columbus shares that he began going to sea at the age of 14, so figure 1466, give or take. And while in 1470 the family moved to Savona, that city was under Genoese influence, so the young sailor’s ability to get jobs with the city’s merchants was unchanged. In 1473, he apparently began an apprenticeship with the Spinola family (of the same-named palace that now hosts the Ligurian National Gallery). And in 1476 or 1477, after a series of gutted voyages with Genoese merchants, he moved to Lisbon, where his brother Bartholomew had a cartography school.
The rest of his story is well-chronicled. He pitched the concept of his voyage west to the Portuguese monarch, John II, and then to Ferdinand and Isabella after Portugal said no. 1492 saw the first of his four trips, and the world has never been the same.
All in all, it’s a fairly quiet childhood from here in Genoa, but the city counts Christopher Columbus – Cristoforo Colombo in Italian – as its most famous citizen, and Columbus-themed activities can be found in a few spots.
First is the childhood home itself. This is an 18th century reconstruction, as the original was destroyed somewhere along the line. (It is thought to be in the 1684 French bombardment of the city, since the reconstruction was standing when Napoleon ended the Republic of Genoa in 1797, so it wasn’t during that conflict.) It was probably two or three stories above a bottom-floor shop, although today it is barely two, with the unstable top floor(s) being removed around 1900 in the city’s construction boom that saw the stunning palaces along neighboring Via XX Settembre built.
Entrance is €5, for which one gets a few signs, one mock-up of a dining table, and knowledge that the building is being kept up. It is a steep price for not much of real interest or meaning, as the home doesn’t contain anything that explicitly ties it to Columbus besides posters and a single carving of his flagship, the Santa Maria. (A visit takes about fifteen minutes if one reads slowly and waits for other guests to clear the small tight spaces.)
On the opposite side of Genoa’s old city is the Piazza Principe train station, and just outside of that building is the city’s main monument to Columbus. Here, a dashing explorer figure stands atop a marble column, with seafaring images and other carved figures. Those figures apparently represent piety, science, constancy, and prudence, but the native woman kneeling at Chris’ feet is even more disturbing than depictions of attributes he did not possess. It was done in the 1870s.
But for actual information on the man and his expeditions, even though it excludes mentions of his abuses, one must visit the city’s Maritime Museum. Here, part of the incredible collection featured inside what is easily the best museum in Genoa in my opinion contains original portraits of Columbus, as well as reproductions (even some contemporaneous ones dating to the early 16th century) of things like his letter of charter.
Animations trace his voyage routes, and bilingual signage discusses Columbus’ life. There are also really well done scale models of his three ships from the 1492 journey.
I suppose that one can be the most famous citizen of a place without having lived a good life, although I’d hope that as the decades and centuries advance, Genoa can instead choose to honor someone who was a decent human. But Christopher Columbus still has a following – even one from historians who do recognize the monster he was – and those people still come here to learn of the man and his origin story.
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