Even this photograph of the port and the "cloud" transformed to the branches of a tree, shows very delicate colours and the industrial, workers area of Genova. A town so much related to the sea and the resulting trade, that this port, the most important of the entire Mediterranean Sea, carries the lighthouse as it's symbol everywhere.

Related to the trade is also the fact that Genoa is the oldest Bankers city of the world, where the compound interest was invented and a lot of related knowledge was built up.

With the growth of towns and trade in Europe, the medieval guilds undertook to protect their members from loss by fire and shipwreck, to ransom them from captivity by pirates, and to provide decent burial and support in sickness and poverty. By the middle of the 14th cent., as evidenced by the earliest known insurance contract (Genoa, 1347), marine insurance was practically universal among the maritime nations of Europe.