This is the view of the docks from the roof, which is worth climbing up for in its own right. It also illustrates our description of the complications of the docks here, which stretch a much longer distance in the other direction (west). From one tiny stone quay, the Molo Vecchio, to this huge dock area.
(The photo was taken through the protective screens around the terrace, and one was dirtier than another: hence the different colours.)
Another feature of the museum is the presentation of the architect Renzo Piano's vision for his home city. As one might expect from Piano, it is nothing if not ambitious. He wants to move the airport out to another, artificial island, connected by subways to the mainland, thus releasing the existing area for a major new site of containerage and ship building. In addition he envisages a new string of open space (a great deficiency in central Genoa), a techno-park, conduits re-aerating the anaerobic harbour basins and so on. A big driver for all these proposals is Genoa's position in the trans-European freight networks (TENs), which of course don't even touch the UK.
These are amazingly exciting proposals from a regeneration point of view, though (surprise!) there is no evidence of how such plans might be financed, nor whether they would bring genuine additional wealth to the many people we saw living in poverty in the old city. (We have rarely seen such obvious prostitution, and we visit a lot of docksides!) We hope that the vision can be expanded to address real need in Genoa itself, and that the best bits of such opportunities won't get lost in a headlong dash for old-world-economic growth.