Forte San Giuliano, Coastal fort in Albaro, Genoa, Italy

Forte San Giuliano is a fort begun in 1826 and completed in 1836 on the Genoese coast between Punta Vagno and the San Giuliano promontory. It has two barracks: the north one, on four floors facing today's via Gobetti, keeps its entrance drawbridge and mechanisms, while the south one, of three floors, stands against the counterscarp wall on the sea side. A moat and a zigzag counterscarp wall surround the complex, and a counterscarp gallery with loopholes links the barracks underground.

Construction of Forte San Giuliano began in 1826 on land beside Villa Sopranis, which was absorbed into the perimeter, and was completed in 1836; it closed the eastern defensive line of S. Martino, S. Tecla, Richelieu, Quezzi and Ratti. In 1849 insurgents occupied it before Savoy troops retook it. A coastal battery with six 28 GRC howitzers was added in 1889, and from 1943 the Wehrmacht and the RSI army used the fort as a prison for anti-fascists and partisans.

The fort is named after the nearby Abbey of San Giuliano, not a patron saint. Its lower gallery, the scarpa tunnel, linked the two barracks and opened into vaulted rooms used as powder magazines and ammunition stores. The zigzag counterscarp wall and the moat on three sides can still be traced around the complex.

The fort has been the seat of the Carabinieri Provincial Command of Genoa since 13 May 1995, so the complex can rarely be visited and only on specific occasions. From Corso Italia you can still see the stumps of the counterscarp gallery cut when the seafront road was built in 1913, and two Tobruk positions emerge from the slope near the access road.

Two Tobruk emplacements from World War II still protrude from the slope above Corso Italia, near the fort's access road. After September 1943 the Wehrmacht and the RSI army used the fort as a prison for anti-fascists and partisans, and on 3 March 1944 Giacomo Buranello, commander of Genoa's GAP, was shot here at dawn after 24 hours of torture.