48 Hours in Genova: A Local's City Guide to Italy's Most Underrated Destination
The Voyage Co.
Genova has a reputation problem. Too many travellers pass through on the way to somewhere else, give it a couple of hours, and leave thinking they have seen it. We asked Cecilia Bortolameazzi, who lives there, to tell us what a proper two days in her city actually looks like.
Ask Cecilia to describe Genova in a sentence and she does not reach for a list of monuments. The answer is short, and she means every word of it.
Incredibly underrated and truly authentically unique.
Genova is a port city that has never quite learned how to perform for travellers. It is dense, layered, and a little rough around the edges in exactly the way that makes it interesting. The medieval centre, the largest historic city centre in Europe by area, is a UNESCO World Heritage site that most visitors walk through quickly without understanding what they are looking at. Cecilia thinks you should slow down considerably.
Day One in Genova: The Caruggi, the Bottegas, and How to Eat Like a Local
The vicoli are the narrow medieval lanes running through the old city, dark and slightly maze-like, smelling of pesto and stone. The bottegas are the small family-run shops and food counters that have been in the same buildings for generations.
I'd say to take a good look at the city historical center and visit all the authentic bottegas in the vicoli on the first day.
Start on Piazza De Ferrari, Genova's main square, and work inward. Via San Luca and the streets around the Palazzo Ducale lead into the Quadrilatero, the densest part of the old city and where you will find the best food counters. The Strade Nuove, the grand palazzo avenue of Via Garibaldi a short walk north, is a UNESCO-listed street of Renaissance and Baroque palaces now home to three major art museums: Palazzo Rosso, Palazzo Bianco, and Palazzo Tursi. Give it an hour before heading back into the caruggi.
This is where you eat. Not at the restaurants with printed menus translated into four languages and a terrace facing the water. I often see travellers have lunch and dinners in tourist traps, Cecilia says, with the weary patience of someone who has watched it happen many times. The vicoli have the real version: standing counters, handwritten menus on chalkboards, pasta made that morning. Order the pesto, obviously, but go further. Try the pasqualina, a flaky vegetable pie layered with chard and ricotta. Order the pansoti with salsa di noci, a pasta filled with wild greens and served with a walnut sauce completely unlike anything else in Italian cooking. Try the farinata if you spot it, a thin crispy chickpea flatbread that comes straight from a wood-fired oven and is best eaten standing up at the counter with a glass of local Pigato white wine. The typical cuisine is incredible from all points of view, Cecilia tells us. She is not overselling it. For another Italian-city food-counter blueprint, see Stefania Nurisso's Bergamo Alta food guide.
Day One Afternoon: Monte Fasce and the Best View of Genova
The one place in Genova that Cecilia says most travellers never reach is Monte Fasce, the hill that rises to 835 metres behind the city. From up there you understand the geography of Genova in a way you simply cannot from street level: the ancient port, the layered rooftops of the caruggi, the sweep of the Ligurian coastline stretching in both directions, and on a clear day the outline of Corsica on the horizon.
I also think travellers don't take full advantage of the public transportation system, a tool that could help many save time and money.
Before heading up, stop at the Spianata di Castelletto, a terrace viewpoint accessible by funicular from Largo Zecca. It gives you a strong mid-level view over the rooftops and is a good warm-up for the scale of the city before you go higher. There is no great trick to reaching Monte Fasce — the public bus system handles it. Genova's transport network includes funiculars and hillside elevators built into the city fabric, relics of an era when Genova had to solve the problem of its own extreme verticality. Use them. They are part of the city as much as anything else.
Day Two in Genova: Boccadasse, Nervi, and the Eastern Coastal Villages
The second day is a move east, away from the historic centre entirely, toward the string of small coastal neighbourhoods that most travellers to Genova never reach.
I'd visit the eastern area of the city, places such as Sturla, Quarto, Quinto and Nervi, which are all small borghi on the coast.
These are technically still within Genova's city limits, but they feel like separate towns, each with its own small beach, its own bar on the lungomare, its own rhythm. Boccadasse, the closest to the centre, is a former fishing village with a pebble cove and a single row of pastel-painted houses. It is fifteen minutes by bus from Piazza De Ferrari and looks nothing like the city you just left. Nervi is the furthest east and the most worth reaching. It has the Passeggiata Anita Garibaldi, a cliff walk that runs along the seafront for about two kilometres with the Ligurian Sea directly below. The Parco di Nervi behind the walk has some of the largest rose gardens in Italy, best visited in late spring. From Nervi, Cecilia recommends wandering up into Sant'Ilario, a small neighbourhood on the hill above. It is a small and unique neighbourhood that offers an incredible view on the sea, she says. This is not on most itineraries. It should be.
Day Trip from Genova: Recco for Focaccia, Camogli for the Harbour
If two days in the city leaves any room for a short trip further east along the Riviera di Levante, Cecilia points toward Recco and Camogli. Both are reachable by train from Genova Brignole station in under thirty minutes. Recco for the focaccia al formaggio, the thin cheese-filled flatbread that is one of Liguria's great underappreciated dishes. It is made with Crescenza cheese, comes from a wood-fired oven, and is best eaten at one of the bakeries on Via Roma or Via Assereto in the town centre.
Camogli for what Cecilia calls its beautiful atmosphere: the painted house facades stacked six storeys high above the harbour, the small shingle beach, the sense that the place has not changed much and is not trying to. For another stretch of Italian coastline that pays back the same kind of slowing-down, see Roberto Vendramin's hidden swimming spots on the Sorrento and Amalfi coasts.
The Best Time to Visit Genova
May and October, Cecilia says without hesitation.
Beautiful weather and you'll find the city a little less crowded.
May gives you the full brightness of the Ligurian spring, the parks in bloom along the Nervi seafront, long evenings still cool enough to walk the caruggi for hours. October is quieter, the light is different, and the city settles back into itself after the summer. Both months give you Genova at something close to its best. Summer is not bad, but the city fills with day-trippers in transit and the caruggi get warm. Winter can be wet, but the Acquario di Genova, Italy's largest aquarium and one of the most visited attractions in the country, is excellent in the off-season with far fewer crowds.
Why Genova Deserves More Than a Stopover
I wouldn't say there's a place in particular that's overrated, but I'd suggest also visiting the outskirts of the city and exploring the mountains.
There is no place in Genova that Cecilia would call overrated, which says something. Most cities this old have a few monuments that have outlasted their actual interest. Genova's version of that problem runs the other way: it has things that deserve far more attention than they get. The medieval lanes, the hillside funiculars, the eastern borghi, the views from Monte Fasce. Most of it does not require a ticket or a reservation. It just requires the decision to go a little further than most people do.
