Gulf of Genoa

Map of the Gulf of Genoa

View from Genoa

The Gulf of Genoa (Golfo di Genova) is the northernmost part of the Ligurian Sea. This Italian gulf is about 145 km (90 mi) wide from the city of Imperia in the west to La Spezia in the east. The largest city on its coast is Genoa, which has an important port and a storied history.

Quotes

• On the whole I was much disappointed with all after Mentone, until I got to Albenga, but there the valley runs up between very noble mountains, now covered with snow, and the coast road afterwards is delicious — the precipices & galleries very grand indeed, & the water more like an imagination than a fact. Still, it was grander in most respects, in the storm, until a point about six miles before we got here, where sweeping out of a Gondo like gallery, you open the whole gulph of Genoa, with its grand hills, as far as Sestri — Savona in the near bay — Genoa glittering on the opposite side of the gulph. The same view of Genoa is commanded from the port here, and I sat watching it, and, what I had never seen before, shoals of dolphins of large size bounding along the quiet swells of the sea. It gave me some new ideas altogether.
  • John Ruskin, letter to his father from Savona, 25 April 1845. Harold I. Shapiro, ed. Ruskin in Italy: Letters to His Parents, 1845 (1972), p. 39

• The Gulf of Genoa itself presents the most exquisite colouring, and has been elegantly styled by a female Traveller, 'a vast prism.'
  • Josiah Conder, Italy, Vol. 1 (London: James Duncan, 1831), p. 222