Portoria (Portöia in Ligurian) is a central district of Genoa, administratively included in Municipio I Centro Est.
It was one of the sestieri into which the city of Genoa was anciently divided. Its name is linked to the revolt against the Austrians on December 5, 1746, which began with the famous Balilla episode.
For centuries a working-class and suburban neighborhood, although included within the city walls, with the urban expansion of the late 19th century it became the center of the modern city. Included in the Portoria area are some of the main streets and squares of downtown Genoa: Piazza De Ferrari, Piazza Dante, Piazza Corvetto, part of the very central Via XX Settembre, the main artery of Genoa's commercial area, and Via Roma.
Neighborhood description
Toponym The name derives from the presence of a gate in the so-called Barbarossa walls for having been built in the 12th century, around 1155, in view of the approaching German emperor. This gate was called Porta Aurea, or Porta d'Oria (because it was located at the limits of the Doria family's property), a name that in contraction into Genoese became Portóia. Its remains, consisting of the entrance arch and the two towers, which were cut off in the 18th century, were demolished in the early 1960s with the urban restructuring of the entire neighborhood.Comune di Genova - Ufficio Statistica, Atlante demografico della città, luglio 2008.
Territory
Historically, the Portoria sestiere included the area between the Barbarossa walls and the sixteenth-century city wall, consisting of the Rivo Torbido valley and the Carignano hill. The Rivo Torbido is a short stream (since the 16th century entirely covered) that originates from the hill of Multedo (in the area of Piazza Manin, in the Castelletto district) and flows into the sea in the so-called "seno di Giano" (now buried and included in the port area), flowing below Via Palestro, Piazza Corvetto, Via V Dicembre, Piazza Dante and Via Madre di Dio.
With the constitution of the districts, in the 20th century, the district of Portoria was merged with that of San Vincenzo, another historic city district, creating the district of "Portoria," subdivided into the "urban units" of "San Vincenzo"Including in addition to the area of San Vincenzo proper also the heart of the old Portoria district. and "Carignano," both of which are now included in the Municipio I Centro Est.
The Portoria area proper comprises an irregular quadrilateral with Piazza Corvetto, Piazza De Ferrari, Piazza Dante and the Monumental Bridge at its vertices. It is bordered to the west by the Molo and Maddalena districts, to the east by San Vincenzo, to the north by Castelletto, and to the south by Carignano.
Demographics The territory of the former Portoria district had a population of 12,514 as of December 31, 2017, of which 5,262 were in the "urban unit" of San Vincenzo alone, which as mentioned also includes the heart of the former Portoria district.
Available historical data concern the former Portoria district as a whole, with the two urban units of San Vincenzo and Carignano. The demographic history of the former district is affected by the urbanistic vicissitudes of the area. The population, 35,877 at the first census in 1861, rose to 40,260 in 1901, a figure representing the "historical maximum." Since then, with the transformation of these former working-class neighborhoods into an area designated for business centers and tertiary activities, a conspicuous population decline began. The population, still 35,007 in 1936, declined to 20,021 in 1961Comune di Genova - Ufficio Statistica, Atlante demografico della città, luglio 2008. and 12,514 in 2017, of which 5,262, as already mentioned, were in the San Vincenzo urban unit alone.
History Commonly today the name of Portoria refers to the neighborhood of Piccapietra, in the heart of the modern city, but its history is ancient: before wartime destruction and, above all, building speculation wiped out the old artisans' houses, caruggi and small squares, uprooting its population, it was a kind of socio-linguistic enclave.
The history of the neighborhood from the 14th to the 18th century gravitated around the many corporations that had their headquarters in the historic cores, outside the city walls, that had sprung up in the Middle Ages on ecclesiastical land holdings. Another important landmark of the neighborhood were the two hospital complexes of Pammatone and Incurabili, active from the late 15th century until the early decades of the 20th century.
Urban planning operations in the last century have systematically destroyed the pre-existing urban and social fabric, leading to the almost total disappearance of the historic nuclei of Piccapietra, Ponticello and Borgo Lanaioli, of which little fragmentary evidence remains in the present district of mainly business and commercial use.
Origins
Much of the area of today's Portoria district, in pre-Roman times (6th to 3rd centuries B.C.) was occupied by a vast necropolis that stretched from the Piano di Sant'Andrea to the hill of the same name and to the area where the church of St. Stephen would later be built. The remains of these burials came to light during work on the construction of Via XX Settembre. The tombs, similar to Etruscan tombs, testify to the Etruscan presence guarding the port inlet, located along the route to Marseille, around which the primitive settlement had formed.
On this area, which remained outside the first city walls, first emerged (9th century) the Abbey of St. Stephen, to which a vast landed property owned by the Benedictine monks of the Abbey of San Colombano of Bobbio belonged; the first houses were built in the middle of the 12th century when the town was provided with a new ring of walls, known as the Barbarossa walls, of which the Soprana and Aurea gates were part;Comune di Genova - Ufficio Statistica, Atlante demografico della città, luglio 2008. in the 14th century some nuclei of houses were built to accommodate the artisan classes; in the same period a new ring of walls encompassed these settlements as well.Touring Club Italiano, Guida d'Italia - Liguria, 2009 These urban cores from the late Middle Ages until the eighteenth century were home to numerous corporations, among which emerged that of the Dyers, after whom an alley in the old quarter was also named, which disappeared with the demolitions of the twentieth century.
This is how Giustiniani, a bishop and historian, described the area in his "Annals" in the early sixteenth century:
In the seventeenth century, Strada Giulia was opened in the district, widening the previous "Strada Felice" and creating the first vehicular connection between the center of Genoa and the lower Val Bisagno. The opening of this road, seven meters wide, an exceptional measure for those times, necessitated the demolition of numerous buildings. Tracing the route of this road, Via XX Settembre would be built at the end of the 19th century.
In 1684 the primitive 15th-century neighborhood was almost completely destroyed by French naval bombardment and shortly rebuilt with state assistance.Touring Club Italiano, Guida d'Italia - Liguria, 2009
The hospitals of Portoria Between the 15th and 16th centuries the two hospitals mentioned by Giustiniani, now disappeared, were built in the Portoria area and were the main point of reference for urban health care for several centuries. At that time, in various Italian cities numerous wealthy people, moved by religious faith or simply by the desire to contribute to the good of the city, donated part of their wealth for interventions in favor of the neediest people. These charitable initiatives sought to intervene within the limits of the possibilities of the time to alleviate situations of infirmity caused by the difficult living conditions of the poor, who constituted the majority of the population."La mia gente", Il Secolo XIX, Genova, 1983 In the wake of this tradition are the figures of Bartolomeo Bosco and Ettore Vernazza, founders of the Pammatone and "degli Incurabili" hospitals, respectively.
Hospital of Pammatone Pammatone Hospital, for nearly five centuries the city's main hospital, was founded in 1422 by Bartolomeo Bosco. From 1471, by the will of the Senate of the Republic, it was destined to replace the many small hospitals scattered around the city.
Between 1478 and 1510 Catherine of Genoa lived at the hospital, devoting herself to the care of the sick and the administration of the facility, of which she was also the director.
The hospital was enlarged in 1758 with the contribution of numerous benefactors, and in particular of the noblewoman Anna Maria Pallavicini, who with a bequest of 125,000 Genoese liras allowed the work to begin.
At the beginning of the 20th century, activities and functions were transferred to the new San Martino Hospital, and the old Pammatone building became home to the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Genoa. Almost completely destroyed by bombing in World War II, what remained of the complex was demolished in the 1960s; the new courthouse was built on the site of the 18th-century building, which preserves the colonnaded courtyard, the monumental staircase of the old hospital and some statues of benefactors inside.
Hospital of the Incurables The "Ospedale degli Incurabili" or "dei Cronici," popularly called "Spedaletto," was founded by Ettore Vernazza in 1499; for four centuries it was Genoa's most important institution for the care of the chronically and mentally ill.
Initially designed to take in patients with syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that had begun to spread in Europe in those very years, in the decades following its foundation epileptics and the mentally ill were also admitted there.
The large complex, into which the 13th-century church of St. Columbanus and the adjoining convent were also incorporated, functioned until the 1920s, when activities and furnishings were transferred to the new St. Martin's Hospital, but by 1841 most of the psychiatric patients had already been transferred to the new asylum built in the San Vincenzo area.Ettore Costa, in "Descrizione di Genova e del Genovesato", Tipografia Ferrando, Genova, 1846
Half-destroyed by bombs in World War II, what remained of the complex was demolished in the 1960s, when the modern business and commercial district of Piccapietra was built.
Balilla revolt in Portoria
Old Portoria is known for the uprising of the Genoese against the Austro-Piedmontese army, which occupied the city under the control of Minister Plenipotentiary Antoniotto Botta Adorno, on December 5, 1746. The initiator of the uprising was a young boy, a century later identified as Giovan Battista Perasso, known as Balilla. The episode is set in the context of the War of the Austrian Succession, in which the Republic of Genoa found itself involved alongside the French and Spanish against the Duchy of Savoy and Austria.
In September 1746 the Austrians under General Botta Adorno had occupied the city. On December 5, a squadron of Austrian soldiers was found crossing the streets of the district dragging a heavy mortar into the street of Portoria that was to be moved from the heights of Carignano to another strategic point for the control of the city.
The road, perhaps muddy from the rain, sank under the weight of the mortar, and the soldiers asked the locals for help, swearing at them in a bad way; when a sergeant raised a stick against a man to make him obey, the revolt began.