Cattedrale di San Lorenzo

Genoa's cathedral is built in striped black and white marble in the distinctive Ligurian Gothic manner, fronted by a heavily carved 13th-century portal that remains one of the finer surviving examples of Gothic stone carving in the region. The striped marble treatment was historically a genuine status marker in Genoa — only families granted specific privilege by the Republic were permitted to use the same striped pattern on their own private houses, making the cathedral's facade a visible symbol of civic authority as much as a religious statement.

Inside the nave sits one of the cathedral's more startling artefacts: a British naval shell that crashed through the roof during a bombardment in 1941 and, remarkably, failed to detonate. Rather than being quietly removed, it has been left in place with an explanatory plaque, a direct physical reminder of the city's wartime experience inside an otherwise entirely medieval space. The cathedral's treasury below holds the Sacro Catino, a green glass dish that medieval Genoa believed, without much basis, to be the Holy Grail — a legend that persisted for centuries despite the dish's later identification as Roman or early medieval glasswork.