Genoa was, in 1492, a city-state on the coast of what is now part of the northwestern province of Liguria in Italy. This small, but economically vibrant seaport, was made eternally famous for the documented fact that this was the home port of Christopher Columbus.
 
Columbus was a master mariner who optimistically sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean in a brave endeavor to find a shorter route to the Spice Islands of the East, only to become one of the first Europeans to land on the Caribbean island that he named Hispaniola on Oct. 12, 1492. By ...