_Senat. Cons. Andreae de Oria Patriae Liberatori Munus Publicium_.

If you return from S. Matteo to the Piazza Deferrari and then follow the
Via Carlo Felice (and without some sort of guidance such as this you are
like to be lost in the maze of the city) on your way to the beautiful
Piazza Fontane Marose, you pass on your left the Palazzo Pallavicini,
empty now of all its treasures.

On your right as you enter this square of palaces is the Palazzo della
Casa, once the Palazzo Spinola, decorated with the black and white
marble, built in the early part of the fifteenth century, in the place
where the old tower of that great family once stood. It is the palace of
the oldest Genoese family, and the statues in the façade represent the
most famous members of the clan, as Oberto, the son of the founder of
this branch of the race, the Luccoli Spinola, Conrado, who ruled the
city in 1206, and Opizino, who married his daughter to Theodore
Paleologus, Emperor of Constantinople, and lived like a king and was
banished in 1309. The palace itself is said to have been built with the
remains of the Fieschi palace which the Senate destroyed in 1336. Beyond
it rise the Palazzo Negrone and the Palazzo Pallavicini, while opposite
the Negrone Palace the Via Nuova, now called Via Garibaldi (for the
Italians have a bad habit of renaming their old streets), opens, a vista
of palaces, where all the greatness and splendour of Genoa rise up
before you in houses of marble, and courtyards musical with fountains,
walls splendid with frescoes, and rooms full of pictures.

Before passing into this street of palaces, however, the traveller
should follow the difficult Salita di S. Caterina, which climbs between
Palazzo della Casa and Palazzo Negrone towards the Acqua Sola, that
lovely garden, passing on his way the old Palazzo Spinola, where many an