San Giovanni Battista dei Genovesi, Baroque parish church in Trastevere, Rome, Italy

San Giovanni Battista dei Genovesi is a Baroque church in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome, featuring a two-story facade with Doric pilasters and a side bell tower. The coat of arms of Genoa is carved into the upper section of the facade, marking the building's origins.

The church was built at the end of the 15th century by a wealthy Genoese banker named Meliaduce Cicala, who wanted to give the large number of sailors arriving at the nearby port of Ripa Grande a place of their own. Over the following centuries the building took on the Baroque appearance it has today.

The church was the national church of the Genoese in Rome, and from 1533 the Confraternity of San Giovanni dei Genovesi administered it and the adjoining sailors' hospital, renamed Opera Pia in 1890. In the cloister garden, a plaque on a pillar records that P. A. Lanza of Savona planted a palm here in 1588.

The former hospital and its cloister are reached from the same via Anicia entrance as the church, through a 15th-century portal. The cloister garden holds orange, lemon and mandarin trees, myrtle hedges and roses around a travertine well with two 14th-century columns. The Oratorio di San Giovanni Battista opens off the cloister.

A palm tree growing in the courtyard is said to be the first ever planted in Rome, placed there in 1588 and recorded by a commemorative plaque still visible on the grounds. It has survived for centuries within the same enclosed garden where the Genoese sailors once sought shelter.