Genoa's Palazzi dei Rolli and Strada Nuova: which palaces you can enter

The short answer

Some of Genoa's Palazzi dei Rolli are open all year as museums or public buildings, and the rest can be visited only in part. The World Heritage property, "Genoa: Le Strade Nuove and the system of the Palazzi dei Rolli", was inscribed in 2006 and covers 42 aristocratic palaces; the City of Genoa's own list shows 24 of them in private use and 18 in public use, and says the public ones, museums and public offices, are open all year while the private ones can be visited only in part.[2][1] Visit Genoa, the city's tourism site, says the palaces that became museums can be visited at any time: the three Musei di Strada Nuova (Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo Tursi), the Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola di Pellicceria and the Museo di Palazzo Reale. It says others house institutions that let visitors see them at least in part, that some privately owned palaces host exhibitions and cultural events, and that many palaces, public and private, open on the Rolli Days.[5]

What the Rolli were

The name describes a hospitality system, not an architectural style. UNESCO's decision says that in 1576 the Republic of Genoa established a legally based list of Rolli, recognising the most outstanding palaces as official lodgings for distinguished guests.[1] The City of Genoa's UNESCO site explains how it worked: palaces were classified from a Senate decree of 1576 by the value of the land and the quality of the building, and entered in lists, the "rolli", divided into three categories called "bussoli", each matched to a rank of guest, from ambassadors to popes and emperors.[3] The City of Genoa's museums page adds that when such a guest arrived, the host palace was drawn by lot from the lists.[6]

The lists were redrawn over time. The city's list of the 42 palaces can be filtered by list year: 1576, 1588, 1599, 1614 and 1664. It numbers the palaces in their order of UNESCO listing and names each one after an early owner, not by the name it goes by today: the list has a Palace of Niccolò Grimaldi and a Palace of Francesco and Ridolfo Brignole Sale, and the city's museum pages say Palazzo Tursi was built for Niccolò Grimaldi and that Palazzo Rosso was the Brignole-Sale family palace.[8][10][2] XTOUR's reading is that a visitor matching the list to the street will often need both names.

The Strade Nuove

The "new streets" are the urban plan the palaces line. According to the City of Genoa's museums page, Strada Nuova, now Via Garibaldi, has an official birth date of 17 March 1550, when the Republic chose a then semi-peripheral area for new buildings, and most of its palaces went up between 1558 and 1588. The same page names three streets as the strade nuove of the listing: sixteenth-century Via Garibaldi, seventeenth-century Via Balbi and the eighteenth-century Strada Nuovissima, now Via Cairoli.[6] The City's UNESCO site also places palaces of the property on Via Lomellini, Via San Luca and around Piazza Fontane Marose and Salita Santa Caterina.[3][2]

UNESCO's decision gives two reasons for the inscription: the streets and palaces, publicised through the architectural treatises of their time, became a landmark in the development of Mannerist and Baroque architecture in Europe, and they show the economy and politics of mercantile Genoa at its height, the siglo de los Genoveses of 1563 to 1640.[1] The museums page says Rubens drew the Strada Nuova residences on site for his book on the palaces of Genoa, published in Antwerp in 1622.[6]

One attribution the museum corrects. The museums page quotes Giorgio Vasari, who credited the Perugian architect Galeazzo Alessi with Strada Nuova, and then says Alessi in fact only designed new villas elsewhere in the city that served as models for its palaces.[6] XTOUR follows the museum's correction and reports Vasari's version as his.

The Musei di Strada Nuova: three palaces, one museum

The city runs Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo Tursi on Via Garibaldi as a single museum, the Musei di Strada Nuova.[7] Each is a different kind of building.

• Palazzo Rosso. Built between 1671 and 1677 to a design the museum attributes to Pietro Antonio Corradi, with frescoed rooms by Domenico Piola, Gregorio De Ferrari and others. Maria Brignole-Sale, Duchess of Galliera, gave it to the city in January 1874 as a monument to her family.[8]
• Palazzo Bianco. First built between 1530 and 1540 for Luca Grimaldi and rebuilt from 1712; the Duchess left it to the city in her will of 1884 to become a public gallery, and it became the centre of Genoa's civic museums. The museum page explains the difference: Palazzo Rosso was to stay a patrician house with a fixed collection, Palazzo Bianco a gallery that could grow.[9]
• Palazzo Tursi. Begun in 1565 for Niccolò Grimaldi, banker to Philip II of Spain, and left without frescoes when Philip suspended payments in 1575; it has been the seat of the Comune di Genova since 15 June 1850. The museum page says its piano nobile was opened to visitors after works in 2003 and 2004, with rooms continuing Palazzo Bianco's paintings, Canova's Magdalene and Niccolò Paganini's violin.[10] The Musei di Strada Nuova page says a new link between Palazzo Bianco and Palazzo Tursi crosses the site of the demolished church of the convent of San Francesco di Castelletto, whose remains can be seen on the way.[7]

What the museum's own pages say about visiting

These points are attributed to the Musei di Strada Nuova page as read on 9 October 2026.[7]

• The ticket shown on the page is a cumulative ticket for the Musei di Strada Nuova and the Museo di Sant'Agostino, and tickets can be bought online.[7]
• On Mondays, the page says, only Palazzo Rosso is open.[7]
• During the Rolli Days, entry to the museum is by booking only, as a guided visit along a selected route of rooms.[7]
• The page carried a notice that Palazzo Rosso's lift was temporarily out of service, so its exhibition spaces were reachable only by stairs.[7]

The city's museum ticket page describes the Genova Museum Card, valid 24 or 48 hours, as covering 28 city museums together with the AMT bus, metro, lift and funicular network. It also lists the Museo di Palazzo Reale and the Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola, the two state-run Rolli museums, among the national museums with free entry on the first Sunday of the month.[11]

The Rolli Days

The Rolli Days are when the private palaces open. Visit Genoa describes them as a weekend on which dozens of palaces, public and private, open to the public, presented by guides it calls Divulgatori Scientifici, with performances and side events.[5] When XTOUR read it on 11 October 2026, the City's UNESCO site announced an October 2026 edition themed "abitare il cambiamento", the second in the twentieth-anniversary year, naming Palazzo Brancaleone Grillo, Palazzo Marcaurelio Rebuffo, Palazzo Ottavio Imperiale and, for the first time, the historic aqueduct among the sites. That page gives no dates and sends readers to Visit Genoa's Rolli Days booking page for the programme.[4] XTOUR does not know the dates of future editions.

Outside the Rolli Days, Visit Genoa says, some privately owned palaces host exhibitions and cultural events, and the decorated atriums and courtyards of many palaces can often be seen from the street. It also advertises a Saturday guided walk past the palaces, run by licensed guides.[5]

Palazzo Ducale and the other palaces

XTOUR does not describe Genoa's Palazzo Ducale as a Rolli palace, because none of the official pages it read names it among the 42; the city's museum ticket page mentions it only as the home of Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cultura, whose exhibitions Genova Museum Card holders can enter at a reduced rate.[11] Visit Genoa also says the 42 listed palaces are only part of the more than 100 that still stand in the historic centre, so a grand palace on these streets is not necessarily one of the 42.[5]

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not publish opening hours or prices for any of these palaces, and it has not read the visiting rules of the Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola or the Museo di Palazzo Reale on their own sites. It does not know which private palaces will open during a given Rolli Days edition beyond those the City names, or the dates of the next edition. It has no information on crowds or how long a visit takes.

For Genoa as a destination, see the Genoa destination page and the Italy regions and bases guide.