Castello d'Albertis

Castello d'Albertis is a neo-Gothic castle on the Montegalletto hill above Genoa, at Corso Dogali 18, built between 1886 and 1892 for Captain Enrico Alberto d'Albertis. D'Albertis was a Genoese navigator, yachtsman and amateur ethnologist who sailed extensively, including a crossing of the Atlantic in a small yacht, and he wanted a home that expressed his love of the sea and of medieval fortresses. The designer was the architect Alfredo d'Andrade, a Portuguese-born figure associated with the Italian medievalist revival and with the restoration of historic buildings in Piedmont and Liguria. The castle is built on the remains of older fortifications and imitates a Gothic fortress with crenellated towers, loggias, battlements and a terraced layout, so that it belongs to the Gothic Revival of the late 19th century rather than to the medieval period it evokes. Captain d'Albertis lived here and filled it with maps, instruments, objects from his voyages and ethnographic items gathered from the Americas, Asia and Oceania. He died in 1932 and bequeathed the castle to the city of Genoa, which later turned it into a museum. The interiors preserve rooms arranged in his personal manner, including a study with navigational items, a library and a salon, and the terrace offers broad views across the old port. Parts of the structure were damaged in World War II and the building has been restored in stages, with the museum reopened in its current form in the early 21st century. The collection is now part of the Museum of World Cultures, treated separately in this guide, while the castle itself is valued as an architectural and biographical document. A visit moves through the house in a loosely thematic sequence from private rooms to display spaces. The castle is reached by a short uphill walk or by the nearby Montegalletto lift and funicular, and it gives visitors a distinctive view of late 19th-century Genoese taste and its fascination with the medieval past.