You begin to wonder where Rubens — who, as an ambassador-painter, was a connoisseur of the high life — got the idea that Genoa was full of “beautiful and Commo- dious buildings”. Then the club sandwich gains smart new ingredients: alleys widen into streets and you come to what was the Strada Nuova and is now Via Garibaldi. Its fat palazzos have the intimidating, fortified self-confidence of the banks that enriched their owners. The Palazzo Spinola, slightly down from Via Garibaldi, is now a museum. Somewhat like the Wallace Collection, you can enjoy its treasures — and those of the adjacent Palazzo Rosso, with its classy second-raters — almost on your own.

Genoa’s modest charm is that it is not on the touristic A-list. You hear almost no language but Italian, mostly quietly spoken. The wide main shopping street, Via XX Settembre, is partly arcaded, like central Turin, but the best shopping — especially for cheese and oil — is in the Mercato Orientale, off Via Galata.

You walk up Via XX Settembre to the Piazza de Ferrari, with its sprawling fountain. In the adjacent Piazza Matteotti, the doge’s palace has little of the pastry-cook flamboyance of the one in Venice. Its renovated facade and officious vanity reassert a vanished supremacy. Genoa has had more than once to rise from its ruins: unlike Rome and Venice, it was not spared heavy bombardment in the last war.

Ironically, the Genoese consider themselves somewhat like the British, both in their seagoing traditions and in what they regard as their understated sense of humour. The irony is that many of the newer buildings in the city — including the refurbished Carlo Felice opera house (where we caught a very fine production of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra) — replaced those pounded to dust, on the calm Sunday morning of February 9, 1941, by a British fleet that included Ark Royal and the battle cruiser Renown (later sunk off Singapore).

In “exactly 31 minutes”, 500 heavy-calibre shells and some 1,800 smaller ones pounded the harbour and the city above it. The usual collateral damage was reported as an outrage: a cathedral and a hospital (where 18 died) were hit. The fascist press denounced la perfida Albione and, as Dolcino reported years later, praised the victimised population.

In truth, Mussolini had brought ruin to the city by parking his fleet in its harbour. Cry foul as he might, the Duce could not hide the fact that the British had come and gone as they pleased, and without loss. “After that,” Dolcino concludes, “it was difficult to believe that the Mediterranean was truly ‘Mare Nostrum’.”

One of the great, freaky showpieces of the city — in the top tier of the sandwich — is the genuinely fake medieval castle built, at the end of the 19th century, by Gino Coppede for Evan Mackenzie, an eccentric Scotsman with a bad case of the Ruritanias. During a brief siege, I couldn’t find anyone to lower the drawbridge or raise the portcullis, but it was worth going up to gaze at the Disneyesque turrets and machicolations.

On the very crest of the Genoese architectural heap are the grim, grey mountain-top forts that protected the city against its adjacent rival, Pisa. I doubt if the garrisons up there considered themselves much luckier than the “Turks” in their galleys. If you dream of time-travelling to the Superba’s Golden Age, make sure you wind up in the Palazzo Reale and not in the engine room.

Getting there: the only scheduled flights from the UK or Ireland are operated by British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com), from Gatwick (from £79), and Ryanair (0871 246 0000, www.ryanair.com), from Stansted. The latter has “free” flights until midnight tomorrow; £22 return, including taxes and charges.

Where to stay: the Bristol Palace (Via XX Settembre 35, 00 39-010 592541, www.hotelbristolpalace.com) is a 19th-century mansion house, with large doubles from £100. The Hotel Astoria (Piazza Brignole 4, 010 873316, www.hotelastoria-ge.com) is on a quiet square; doubles from £100. The Hotel Cairoli (Via Cairoli 14/4, 010 246 1454, www.hotelcairoligenova.com) has a pleasant roof terrace; doubles from £48.

Tour operators: Bridge Travel (0870 191 7270, www.bridgetravel.co.uk), Crystal Holidays (www.crystalcities.co.uk), Kirker Holidays (020 7231 3333, www.kirkerholidays.com) and Online Travel (0870 887 0100, www.onlinetravel.com) all offer packages to Genoa.

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