The Imperiale Apartment

Inside the apartment

The apartment is described as one double room plus one twin room on a mezzanine level, with a spacious, bright living area, cooking facilities, a TV, a computer with free internet, a telephone and a mini-bar fridge. Its location, near Piazza Campetto, was described as roughly a minute's walk from Piazza San Lorenzo.

Palazzo Imperiale: a Rolli-era mansion

Historically, Palazzo Imperiale was commissioned and built by Vincenzo Imperiale between 1555 and 1560, and is named alongside Palazzo Tursi as one of the richest mansions in the city built during that century. The archived pages note that war and time compromised some of the building's original paintings and stuccowork, and that a partial restoration — of floors, fresco colours and decoration — was undertaken.

The palace was designed by the Genoese-based Mannerist painter-architect Giovan Battista Castello, known as “il Bergamasco”, whose portal inscription — VINCENTIUS IMPERIALIS MICHAELIS FILIUS 1560 (“Vincenzo Imperiale, son of Michele, 1560”) — still names its founder; Castello designed several of the other great Mannerist palaces of the same years, including Palazzo Tommaso Spinola and Palazzo Carrega-Cataldi on Via Garibaldi. The building was listed on Genoa's official Rolli — the Republic's roster of noble houses obliged to host visiting heads of state — from 1576 until 1664, and Via di Scurreria itself was cut through in 1584 by Vincenzo's son and successor, Gio Giacomo Imperiale (later doge of the Republic, 1617–1619), as a new approach road to the palace.

The palazzo later passed to Vincenzo's grandson, Giovanni Vincenzo Imperiale (1582–1648) — admiral of the Genoese fleet, a senator of the Republic, and a Baroque poet — who assembled one of Genoa's most celebrated private art collections there, numbering some 325 works by his death. Van Dyck's own portrait of him, painted in the mid-1620s, now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It's this later, more famous resident the building is often associated with today, even though it was his grandfather who built it. For how Palazzo Imperiale compares with the era's other great mansions — including Palazzo Tursi, which the archived pages also name-check — see our guide to Genoa's historic palazzi.