The church of S. Lodovico, also called S. Paolo, was formerly attached to a Benedictine nunnery. Correggio's celebrated series of pagan frescoes cover the walls of the "parlour" of the nunnery. They were executed to the order of the abbess, Giovanna da Piacenza, and are more fitted for a "Trianon" than a convent. Minerva, Juno, Bacchus, and other heathen gods and goddesses, with Cupids, and such-like profanities, are most charmingly arranged amidst a lattice pattern of flowers and foliage. At the period, the beginning of the sixteenth century, when this dainty scheme was painted, great licence and irregularities prevailed in some of these conventual establishments. The abbess and her nuns often entered into all the gaieties of the outside world and indulged in the vices pertaining to it. In this case the wrath of the austere Adrian VI. was visited on Giovanna and her flock, and S. Paolo was closed, the abbess dying within a month after this humiliation.
The poet Tasso in his "Jerusalem Delivered" sings of the exploits of the great commander of the First Crusade; and although Godfrey de Bouillon had little to do with Genoa, it was from its port that his fleet spread sail in 1096 and disappeared over the southern horizon on its way to the Holy Land. Nearly three years had passed in hard fighting before Godfrey and his army found themselves before the walls of Jerusalem. Meanwhile the Second Crusade had started from Genoa, under the command of Guglielmo Embrianco. He joined forces with De Bouillon, and the Holy City fell to their arms on July 15, 1099. Embrianco covered himself with glory; and on his return, among other treasures, brought home the celebrated Sacro Catino, which he presented to his native city. This dish of green glass is in the Cathedral. For centuries it was supposed to have been fashioned from a single emerald, and tradition has it as the very dish, the Holy Grail, which held the Paschal Lamb at the Last Supper.
The port of Genoa is very different now to what it was in those early days. Ships of all nationalities and every sort of build find refuge behind the numerous breakwaters which protect them from every gale that blows. The Molo Vecchio is the oldest of these shelters, and built upon half its length is an old quarter that is one of the fast-vanishing slums of the city. On the sea-ward side of this mole the Mura della Malapaga frowns on incoming craft, just as when in days gone by it bid defiance to the enemies of Genoa whose temerity had led them thus far in attacks on the city. It is terminated by a grand sea-gateway of very massive construction. At the end of a subsequent extension the old lighthouse rises, now well within the port. The house still stands in the old quarter in which Marco Polo was imprisoned after the defeat of the Pisans at the battle of Curzola, when he was taken captive. The Molo Nuovo stretches from the west side of the port near the tall Pharo, and, running outwards, bends back and covers the Molo Vecchio from the southerly gales.