Summer Previews : Double Exposure : Two European Cities Hope Their Extravagant Summer Expositions Will Draw Tourists from the New World and Old, and Revitalize Their Once-Proud Economies

Straggling improbably across a series of hills hard by the busy Tyrrhenian Sea, this is a city that sends out conflicting signals--and justifies them both.

It’s a bit old-fashioned, to be sure, as the name of its oldest daily newspaper--Secolo XIX (19th Century)--suggests. But it’s haughty, too, as its nickname in Italian-- La Superba --implies. It’s earthy in equal measure. Superb.

This is a big year for Genoa. History is being called upon to repair the ravages of time in the name of a brighter tomorrow.

Columbus was born here. Not big news perhaps, but the inspiration of a big-deal, summer-long international exposition called “Christopher Columbus: Ships and the Sea.” The celebration is calculated to bring new life and new fans to a port of 800,000 souls that was once an audacious maritime city-state and now is just another big port. Even counting transients on the way to the nearby Italian Riviera, Genoa sees only about a third as many visitors each year as Turin or Milan, neither of which rank high as Italy’s tourist Meccas.

Smaller, more picturesque and more restful towns such as Portofino and its seaside brethren are also bigger tourist draws. For many Americans, Genoa is often no more than an autostrada drive-by on the way to or from France.

A shame, because like the quayside exhibition to honor the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ first voyage west, Genoa’s failure to match the lure of other big Italian cities is part of its appeal. It is a city with a distinctive flavor all its own.

There is industrial and cultural wealth of the sort you’d expect of a city that produced seven Popes, two Nobel Prize winners, invented banking, denim and, yes, the Genoa jib. “There may be a prettier woman in Europe, but I doubt it,” observed Mark Twain, innocently abroad in 1869.

The civic focus this summer, though, is not on the winsome but on the ugly: the derelict waterfront disjoined from the Old Town by an eyesore elevated highway. For years, Genoa has wondered what to do with its old port.

“We’d like to make it a new center for a city which has grown up and down hills facing the sea. Many people have left the Old Town. We’d like to draw them back,” said Odoardo Scaletti, a spokesman for the Columbus exhibition.

“The Columbus anniversary was an excuse to rethink the city’s future,” he said. “We hope to draw people into the area not only for the exhibition, but for good, especially at night. When the exhibitors leave, it is expected that Genoa’s newspapers and other businesses that work at night may move into the space.”

With handsome financing from the Italian goverment, a 15-acre waterfront site at the old port has been overhauled for exhibitions from 50 nations that organizers optimistically say will draw 4 million visitors during its 90-day run from May 15 to Aug. 15.

Virtually every country in Europe and the Americas will host an exhibit. The Japanese are mounting theirs on a ferry boat. Egypt is sending former King Farouk’s royal yacht.

Star of the show will be a big U.S.-designed, state-of-the-art aquarium at water’s edge. Boat-shaped, two football fields long and ingeniously arranged to exhibit creatures from a variety of seas, Europe’s biggest aquarium, conceived by Cambridge Seven Associates of Boston, should draw visitors to Genoa for decades to come.

Some of the exhibiting nations, including Italy, will moor displays under stylized boat derricks rising from the water as a signature of the show. Designed by architect Renzo Piano, a native son whose works include Japan’s Osaka airport and Paris’ Pompidou art museum, one of the derricks will hoist visitors high above the port in a glass-sided elevator. A new convention center and a dockside, under-canvas theater will also be inaugurated this summer.

Most exhibitions will be housed in historic warehouses of coffee, cotton and spices, restored and air-conditioned for the occasion. Among them, a U.S. exhibition will focus on the Chesapeake Bay region to illustrate the history of America’s waterways in the context of historic, cultural, economic and environmental issues. The topic is well-suited to flatter Genoa: Baltimore, at the head of the Chesapeake, is Genoa’s brother port and American sister city.

“The dock-front of Genoa is marvelous. Such heat and colors and dirt & noise and loud wicked alleys with all the washing of the world hanging from the high windows,” wrote Dylan Thomas in a 1947 letter to his parents.

Today, Genoa’s apparently aimless Old Town alleys, the carugi , are still as loud and wicked as they were when Dylan Thomas visited. I always get the impression that this is how Italy’s ancient cities tasted before the tourists came. The context is Italian, to be sure, but there is also the unmistakable tang and mystery of a Middle Eastern bazaar.

Alleys wander hither and yon, without much rhyme, reason or discernible pattern. It’s the sort of place where, in search of the 12th-Century Romanesque cathedral, you stumble on a fascinating tropical fish store and a fetching furniture shop as antique as its wares. Perhaps since maps are better souvenirs than guides in the carugi , the Genoese (who spell their city Genova ) are remarkably patient, if not always accurate, direction-givers. Genoa’s alleys are packed with life, most of it blue-collar: sidewalk salesmen hawking umbrellas, smuggled cigarettes and smirking, life-sized ceramic cats; Senegalese vendors of possibly-African wood carvings and certainly phony designer handbags. Watch your wallet, and be ready for all kinds of surprises. One of the nicest ones is that there are no cars; the medieval concourses are, blessedly, too narrow for even the most mini Fiat.

There are shoe shops, book shops, butcher shops, ship’s chandlers, fish stores, narrow restaurants and bars uncounted, some mostly for coffee, but others of unabashedly doubtful conveyance.

And, hallelujah, nary a one that sells “I Love Genoa” T-shirts.

The up-and-down historic center of Genoa is the biggest in Italy after Venice and Florence, but neglect, war and flood have left it a far cry from its civic splendor in the Middle Ages. In those days, La Superba was principal rival to Venice.

On the waterfront, the magnificent Palazzo San Giorgio, begun in 1260 and one of a bevy of municipal monuments being restored for the birthday celebrations, is ornate testimony to bygone greatness. In the dungeon of the palace decorated with the well-known Cross of St. George (but no dragons), a certain Venetian prisoner-of-war awaiting ransom dictated what would become history’s best-selling travel book: “The Travels of Marco Polo.”

Across the centuries, the arrogance and prosperity of Genoa’s sailing merchants annoyed more than Venetians. Dante, a Florentine, panned Genoa: “ . . . a sea without fish, mountains without wood, men without conscience and women without honor.” An infernally low blow against a republic whose medieval moguls invented not only double-entry accounting, but also bingo.

Genoa’s historic center is the most rundown of any big Italian city. For centuries, the busy port dominated a city that grew up the hill behind it. But the seafront area was badly damaged during World War II, and in postwar reconstruction, the port moved to modern quarters further west.

The big freighters now dock close enough to see the old port (Porto Antico), which dates to Roman times, but far enough away to have ruined it commercially. Businesses moved, then the people. The neighborhood went bad.

By contrast, beginning at the Piazza De Ferrari on top of the seaside hill dwells the arcaded, elegant Genoa, proud regional and provincial capital of Liguria. The shops are as good (and often the same) as any in Milan or Rome. Restaurants work magic with the succulent blend of olive oil and herbs--in Genoa, basil is bliss--that is the soul of the Ligurian kitchen. One key uphill, uptown landmark is the newly redone Piazza Dante, where official Genoa proudly but inaccurately exhibits the crumbling medieval home of the Colombo family, where sailing scion Cristoforo was born in 1447. Some Genoese historians fearlessly aver, however, that it is certainly neither the house nor the place where the future admiral of the ocean seas endured his first squall.

Genoa’s cobblestoned, traffic-less Via Garibaldi, which borders the Old Town but emphatically is not of it, is one of Europe’s most alluring promenades, lined end to graceful end with textbook 15th- and 16th-Century mansions. Chief among them are the Palazzo Rosso and the Palazzo Bianco, both museums that belie Genoa’s reputation as an in different art town. Rosso (red) has a Veronese, a Titian, Caravaggio’s “Ecce Homo,” a Rubens, a Van Dyck and a Murillo. Bianco (white) has works of the Byzantine and Flemish schools.

The Columbus exposition will draw a summerload of tourists to these and other highlights of overlooked Genoa, but that is almost beside the point. What is at play is an audacious attempt to rebuild the soul and recover the identity of the heart of one of Europe’s fabled seafaring cities.

GUIDEBOOK

Genoa, Columbus’ Home Port

Getting there: Genoa is about an hour by air, six hours by train or toll highway from Rome, with easy access to popular Italian Riviera resorts such as Portofino, about a 45-minute drive away. Nice, port city of the French Riviera, is about two hours by car. Alitalia flies nonstop from Los Angeles to Milan (fares for travel during Columbus exhibit dates are expected to be around $1200), where there are connections to Genoa via bus or train. There is direct air and rail access from most European capitals. (Caution: If you drive, much of the central city is closed to private cars and there is no parking near the old port.)

The exhibition: “Christopher Columbus: Ships and the Sea,” at the Porto Antico, will be open daily, 9 a.m.-9:30 p.m., May 15-Aug. 15. Admission is about $20.

Where to stay: Prices in Genoa are likely to be no more outrageous than anywhere else in Italy, where national prosperity and a strong lira beggar the anemic dollar.

Genoa’s newest hotel is the Star President (Corte Lambruschini 4, telephone 011-39-10-5727), ultra-modern and close to one of the city’s main train stations (Brignole). It has 198 rooms and its own car park. About $250 for a double.

The Savoia Majestic (Via Arsenale di Terra 5, 011-39-10-261-641) is a comfortable 19th-Century hotel with a congenial staff. It’s across from another main train station, Principe. Double rooms about $200.

The Bristol (Via XX Settembre 35, 011-39-10-592-541), a short walk from the Brignole staton and just over a mile from the Columbus exposition, is Genoa’s only remaining belle-epoque hotel. Built in the early 1900s, it has frescoed ceilings; spacious, recently refurbished rooms, and a few well-chosen antiques. No car park or garage. About $275 double.

The Britannia (Via Balbi 38, 011-39-10-26991) is near the Columbus exhibition, a short walk from Genoa’s Principe railway station. Garage. About $240 double.

Where to eat: Gran Grotto (Via Fiume 11, local telephone 564-344) features Ligurian cooking using local ingredients: olive oil, herbs and fish and the occasional veal and wild game; about $80 per person. Primo Piano (Via XX Settembre 36, phone 540-284), in the historic heart of the city, is where the Genoese go to eat, especially for fish (Mediterranean lobster with beans and onions, gnocchi with sea bream sauce); about $60 per person. Zeffirino (Via XX Settembre 20, phone 591-990) is where everyone goes to eat pesto, the native, basil-based pasta sauce; about $85 per person.

Tours: In May, a West Coast travel agency, The Travel Bug, is offering one-week tours highlighting the Columbus anniversary for the appropriate price of $1,492, including air fare from New York (add-on air from Los Angeles is $334). Three nights are spent in the nearby Italian Riviera resort of Santa Margarita. In June and July, the price rises to $1,692. Contact The Travel Bug, 22 Montgomery St., Suite 1034, San Francisco 94104, (800) 221-2264.

For more information: Contact the Italian Government Travel Office, 360 Post St., Suite 801, San Francisco 94108, (415) 392-6206. Call before 1 p.m.