Giustiniani 19
What we now call Giustiniani 19 was not born as a single palazzo. It is the result of three medieval merchant houses standing side by side on the alley, which between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries were joined, enlarged and raised until they became the noble residence with two piano nobile floors, the columned light well and the slate staircase we see today.
The investigations carried out for the restoration read the palazzo layer by layer: the masonry and the bricks, the sands in the mortars, the overlapping colours on the walls, the ceilings hidden by false ceilings. The result is a chronology running from the twelfth century to today's building site, with many certainties and some hypotheses to be verified during the works, and a restoration project that says, room by room, what will come back to light.
Observing the facades, staircases and walls, measuring the bricks (mensiochronology) and comparing with sources such as the 1414 plan of Genoa make it possible to distinguish the building blocks and their phases.
Ten plaster samples analysed under the microscope in thin section: the sand in each mortar comes from a specific beach, and each beach was exploited in a specific era. Twelve groups of mortars, twelve moments of construction.
Small test windows opened on walls and vaults, one layer of colour at a time, until the sixteenth-century frescoes, the eighteenth-century stuccoes and the nineteenth-century temperas hidden beneath the recent paint are found.
The restorers have catalogued every ceiling, vault, wall and floor of value: what is there, what condition it is in, how it will be cleaned, consolidated and reintegrated. It is the document that accompanies the building site and says what each apartment will recover.
The oldest mortars found in the palazzo, on the third floor, contain sand from the Marina beach and date from between the eighth and the twelfth century. A wall of the stairwell can be dated to 1300 from the size of its bricks.
Three independent houses stood on the alley, each with its own staircase. They were merchant houses, with a commercial portico on the ground floor and living quarters above: the squared-stone openings of the facade, a round arch towards Vico San Bernardo, a stone pillar in the entrance hall and the solid stone steps typical of medieval staircases all recall this. On the third floor a large shaped wooden beam and a marlstone pillar with the corbels that support it survive.
In 1928, during works on the neighbouring building, number 21, two thirteenth-century pointed arches came to light. The site of Giustiniani 19 is also protected for its archaeological interest.
The reconstruction of the city in 1414, drawn up by the historians Grossi Bianchi and Poleggi from written documents, shows three separate buildings in this block. Where the wing towards the inner courtyard now stands, the warehouse of the Salvago family still stood.
Of those three houses the three stairwells remain, recognisable at different levels: the one in the wing towards Vico San Bernardo survives on almost every floor, with steps entirely of stone at the second level.
Like most palazzi in the old town, this one too turns from merchant house into noble house: the portico is closed and the first floor is created, the interior spaces are redistributed. The light well with its marble columns and balustrades, which brings light to the centre of the building, is attributed to this phase.
On the first floor, in a room facing the alley, two slate seats under the window and, beneath six layers of paint, a faux-marble fresco on marmorino plaster, with the intense tones typical of the sixteenth century. On the piano nobile, a white marmorino with yellow decorations painted a secco, from the same era.
Between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century the palazzo takes over part of the old warehouse and builds the wing towards the courtyard: the brick sizes, the mortars with Sampierdarena sand and the shape of the vaults and openings all say so. In the same period one of the staircases is reworked and a gallery is opened onto the light well.
It is the century of the coffered wooden ceilings on the first floor: beams decorated with braids and panels with multi-lobed flowers and interlaces, painted in tempera, preserved precisely because they were hidden for generations beneath a false ceiling. The restorers assign the same era to the Carrara marble portal, an arch with a central keystone.
The fourth floor, the second piano nobile, takes shape: balusters on the facade, stucco-decorated rooms and a small hanging chapel in the great hall facing the alley.
Around 1780, a date the bricks of two walls give precisely, the palazzo changes face. The great slate staircase is built, with a new projection over Vico San Bernardo; the third house, long independent, is finally absorbed; the fifth floor is created, with wrought-iron railings at the windows.
It is the season of stuccoes: putti, floral tendrils, garlands and mascarons, with very thin relief and delicate colours. The test windows on the vault of the great hall have found the first eighteenth-century finish, ivory ornaments on a pink ground, with aquamarine and pale blue panels.
A new flight climbs to the sixth floor, with a wooden handrail on shaped wrought-iron supports. The rooms dress in intense colours: tempera vaults with geometric motifs and rosettes, medallions with winged animals, red faux marbles, purplish-pink grounds that cover the more delicate stuccoes of the previous century.
It is also the century of divisions: doors and windows walled up, a metre-wide fireplace bricked up in the great hall, reed false ceilings hiding the vaults, the palazzo split into several dwellings. The marble portal, perhaps moved to the centre of the facade, reuses older elements.
Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century come the terrazzo floors with rosettes and borders, the terracotta tiles and the tempera-painted ceilings with medallions, grotesques and bouquets of flowers. Then the twentieth century brings bathrooms and kitchens, hollow-brick partitions, reinforced-concrete walls, synthetic paints covering every wall. The staircases of the original houses are partly demolished. Towards the end of the century a hall on the first piano nobile becomes a gym, with a rubber floor marked out as a sports court over the marble.
In 2011 the building, empty for years, is occupied and becomes a social centre for a year, with a library and a computer point. In June 2012 a collective of graffiti writers decorates its walls, inside and out; the eviction comes the same year. The graffiti remained on the walls until the start of the restoration, the last layer of an eight-century stratification.
With the acquisition by Nautilus the investigations begin: stratigraphic tests room by room, ten mortar samples analysed in the laboratory, the archaeological reading of the masonry. In 2026 the Heritage Authority authorises the restoration and conservation works. The building site, in constant dialogue with the heritage authorities, will bring to light what the investigations have only glimpsed.
The hypotheses presented on this page are those of the technical reports and may be confirmed or refined during the works.
A marble column and a balustrade, walled in when the staircase was separated from the entrance hall, tell that the two spaces were once a single room. Beneath a recent floor the bases of the light-well columns have re-emerged.
Two slate seats under the window and, on all four walls, a sixteenth-century faux-marble fresco, with the purplish band that separates the dado from the ivory walls.
In the hall with the allegorical vault the test windows found a metre-wide fireplace bricked up in the nineteenth century, a walled-up window towards the light well and the original eighteenth-century colours beneath the temperas.
In a room on the light well, refined eighteenth-century stucco floral tendrils cover vault and walls: today they are white, but the test windows show two colour finishes, the soft eighteenth-century one and the intense nineteenth-century one.
The medieval solid stone steps, the very steep 'blue staircase' now disused, the 1780 staircase and the landings floored with slate octagons and small marble squares.
Panelled walls with stucco garlands and mascarons, a vault with eagles and medallions with female figures, blue stencilled floral motifs and, above a collapsed ceiling, the wooden structure of the roof that preceded the raising.
Beneath a false ceiling, a coffered wooden ceiling with braid-decorated beams and coffered panels alternating an interlaced square and a multi-lobed flower with a central crown. Seventeenth-century tempera, in fair condition precisely because it was hidden.
A late nineteenth-century vault: at the centre a tondo with a figure holding a lyre, around it six frames with garlands and festoons and, on blue grounds, male heads painted to imitate patinated bronze. Cherubs, cartouches and gilding complete the composition.
A ceiling from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century: central medallion with plant and geometric motifs in tempera, a band of volutes and scrolls in pastel tones, cartouches, foliage and arabesques radiating out in the grotesque tradition.
The restoration project for the finishes, filed with the Heritage Authority in February 2026, prescribes cleaning, consolidation and reintegration operations for every element of value. In plain words, here is what will happen.
The seventeenth-century Carrara marble portal, the columns, capitals and balustrades of the light well and staircase are freed of graffiti, black crusts and deposits with pH-controlled washes and poultices, and the cracks are filled with lime and marble-dust mortars.
The coffered ceilings on the first floor are cleaned, the temperas consolidated and the gaps filled in matching tones. On the third floor the false ceilings will be removed to reveal the wooden ceilings they hide, and the beams cleaned of white paint.
In the first-floor rooms the overlying whitewash will be removed to bring back into view the faux-marble frescoes on the marmorino plaster, together with the painted dado and the slate seats.
The tempera vaults of the piano nobile floors are consolidated layer by layer, cleaned and reintegrated; the gouache-gilded frames, where the gesso and glue preparation has failed, will be fixed and the gilding renewed with the same ancient technique.
The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stuccoes, now flattened by dozens of coats of paint, are consolidated with limewater, freed of the incoherent layers and completed where missing with lime and sand mortars chosen for colour and grain, respecting the original design.
The historic terrazzo floors with rosettes and borders, the terracotta tiles and the slate slabs with small marble squares of the staircase are cleaned, consolidated and completed where missing, with new treads only where decay leaves no alternative.
The elements of value catalogued by the restoration project, referred to the units for sale. Each card leads to the floor plan.
For centuries Genoese masons took their sand from the city's beaches, each exploited in a different era. Recognising under the microscope where the sand in a mortar comes from means dating the wall that contains it. This is how the ten mortars sampled in the palazzo have been placed along eight centuries.
The discoveries of the restoration will be added to this page as the works progress.
Sources cited in the reports: L. Grossi Bianchi and E. Poleggi, Una città portuale del Medioevo, Sagep 1980; A. Decri, Un cantiere di parole, 2009; T. Mannoni, Case di città e case di campagna, 2004; L. Napoleone, La scoperta della città medievale, 2015.