Genoa's quays present a busy picture with the endless traffic that makes her the premier port of Italy. Strings of heavily laden carts drawn by teams of great mules are continually passing to and fro. Cabs rattle on the pavements, their drivers cracking their whips, the horses' heads decorated with the long tail feathers of the Amherst pheasant that dance about to the music of the harness-bells. Groups of boys play pitch and toss with coins, and still cry "Croce e Griffo" ("Cross or Gryphon"), a cry as old as the wars with Pisa. Itinerant pedlars pester folk to buy what no one seems to want. Under the arcades that face the sea-front shops of all sorts exhibit everything the seafarer can possibly require, and a lively business goes on in restuffing the emigrants' mattresses with dry sea-weed or hay. Up, behind all this, narrow streets wind through the old parts of the city and form an intricate maze wherein it is not difficult to miss one's way. Many of the houses here are seven, eight, or nine storeys high. All the day's washing--and every day is washing day--hangs out from the windows on long bamboos, or flutters from a cord stretched across the confined thoroughfares. Fowls, in their inquisitive endeavours to find food, try to satiate an appetite which is never satisfied. They are all scraggy. Dark courtyards at the bottom of these tall dwellings teem with screaming children and scolding women who are engaged at the fountain troughs with the washing. The ear-splitting cries of hawkers hasten one's footsteps down the steep descents, and one dodges out of their way only to lose oneself in vain attempts to leave the picturesque but squalid quarters of old Genoa.
However fascinating these slums may be--and they can hold their own from the painter's point of view with those in any other Mediterranean port--it must be acknowledged that the palaces for which Genoa is justly famous have hardly a rival. Historically the most interesting is the Palazzo di S. Giorgio, which stands close to the quayside at the east end of the Piazza Caricamento. It was erected in 1261 by Guglielmo Boccanegra, Captain of the People, for his own residence. At his death it was taken over as the government office for the registration of public loans, or _compere_, and named the Palazzo della Compere. In 1407 the Banking Company which practically ruled commercial Genoa acquired it as their headquarters, and its name was changed to that of the city's patron saint. This bank was the oldest in the world. It originated after the Genoese had driven the Venetians out of Constantinople, and so crippled the trade of their great Adriatic rival that for a time they were masters of nearly all the Eastern commerce that flowed westwards. This increase in prosperity was to a great extent the cause of the formation of a trading company, which accepted deposits and advanced loans to others than its own members. Thus was founded a bank that carried on its business successfully until the last Doge of Genoa was unseated and the mushroom Republic of Liguria proclaimed. The bank's property was then confiscated, and Genoa, governed by time-servers and place-hunters, fell upon evil days.