Porta Soprana (Towers of Sant'Andrea) and Barbarossa Walls
Encompassing the three areas of the city – the castrum that developed on the hill of Castello, the civitas, which rose up around the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, and the burgus, a commercial area around the monastery of San Siro – Genoa's new city walls were built in the 12th century to defend the independence of the Republic against the expansionist ambitions of Emperor Barbarossa, after whom they are named. The vast majority of the city's inhabitants participated, both materially and financially, in the work required, which was thus completed in record time between 1155 and 1159 ,while 1161 saw the completion of three of the two-towered gates: Porta Soprana, Porta Aurea and Porta di Santa Fede. Porta Soprana served as the entrance to the city for those arriving from the east, looking over the plane of Sant'Andrea, which took its name from a monastery demolished in the 19th century to create Via Dante and the building that currently houses the Banca d'Italia.
All that survives of the monastery today is the splendid Romanesque cloister.
Barely a stone's throw away is the house-museum of Christopher Columbus, an 18th-century reconstruction of the original building in which the man who discovered the Americas lived in his youth, later destroyed during the French bombings of 1684. Right beside Columbus's home stands the 12th-century cloister of the ancient monastery of Sant'Andrea.