Castello d'Albertis, Genoa

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This castle in neo gothic style was the home of Captain Enrico Alberto D'Albertis, a sailor man, ethologist who founded the first Italian yacht club.
to go there , via balbi there is a lift which is the only in the world using horizontal traction on the first part of the way and vertical lift for the other part of the way.
In the castle there are an ethnographic collection and many items brought back by the Captain D'Albertis from his travels aroud the world.

Captain d'Albertis was not only a sailor, but a very cultured man with one project, to collect, photograph and preserve human artifacts from all the world. And he was very well suceeded. The collection he has got is very impressive and is very well kept in this museum. Other close attraction is the "Montegalletto Ascensore" (Montegalletto's elevator) that connects corso Dogali to via Balbi; what makes this elevator very rare is that the cabin automatically flows in and out of the elevator tunnel, a jewel of the Italian Engineering.

Castello D'Albertis was designed by Alfredo D'Andrade (thanks to Utttz who told it to me!) for the Captain Enrico Alberto D'Albertis and erected on the ruins of sixteenth century and late-medieval fortifications between 1886 and 1892 under the supervision of Alfredo D'Andrade.
When he died in 1932, the captain donated the castle and its collections to the city of Genoa, giving it not only the residence so imaginatively decorated with exotic, neo-gothic and Hispanic-Moorish influences, but also a piece of Genoa's history: a bastion of the sixteenth century walled city containing the ruined foundations of a turret of the previous medieval walls, on which the construction of the castle itself is based.