There are neighborhoods in Genoa that seem to exist in a parallel dimension to the tourist flow of the historic center. Neighborhoods that are literally located above the city – on the hilly side overlooking the Prince Station and the Porto Antico – and yet can be reached in a few minutes with a public lift. Oregina and Lagaccio are this: a Genoa of slate steps, balconies with potted basil, neighborhood shops where you go shopping on foot, views of the port that leave you breathless. A Genoa that is not found in glossy guides but which is, in many ways, the truest of all.
What to see in Oregina and Lagaccio
The public lift in Corso Magenta
The most evocative way to get to Oregina is the one that residents use every day: the public lift of Corso Magenta, one of the four vertical ski lifts managed by AMT that connect the lower city with the hilly districts. The lift – technically a system of cabins that move on inclined tracks – starts from the Corso Magenta tunnel, in the heart of the Principe district, and rises up to the upper districts in a few minutes, overcoming a significant difference in altitude with a route that offers sudden glimpses of the city below.
It’s not just a means of transport: it’s an urban experience. Getting on the lift in Corso Magenta means sharing the cabin with the lady who comes back from shopping, with the boy who goes to school, with the elderly man who has made the journey twice a day for decades. It is a microcosm of popular Genoese life, and the fact that it is a means of public transport – paid for with the normal AMT ticket – makes it accessible to anyone who wants to experience this authentic dimension of the city. Tourists who discover it usually come up in the elevator, go around the neighborhood, and then return on foot via the steps, which is the other great mobility experience of this vertical Genoa.
The views of the Lanterna and the Western Port
The hilly position of Oregina and Lagaccio, on the western side of the hill overlooking the historic center, gives these neighborhoods an extraordinary visual advantage: the view of the Western port of Genoa, the basin in front of the Lanterna and the entire bay from Multedo to the city center opens up with a clarity and completeness that few other points in the city can boast. It is not the view from Righi, which embraces the entire gulf, but it is perhaps more intimate and more surprising: you find yourself in a populous urban neighbourhood, with buildings around, and suddenly between one building and another a window opens onto the commercial port, the cruise ships, the Lanterna which has dominated the basin for centuries.
The natural viewpoints of Oregina are found along the streets that face downwards: they are not panoramic squares equipped with railings and captions, but simple street corners, spontaneous clearings, landings of public stairs from which the view opens suddenly. It is the type of viewpoint that is discovered by walking, not by following a guided tour, and which therefore preserves a sense of discovery and intimacy with the city that official viewpoints rarely offer.
The Steps of Santa Brigida and the Neighborhood Stairs
Oregina and Lagaccio are stair districts. It is not a metaphor: the vertical morphology of the city has generated, over the centuries, a system of steps and stairways in blackboard stone which connect the different levels of the neighborhood and which constitute the main infrastructural network of these places. The Gradinata di Santa Brigida is the most famous and most representative: a monumental staircase that descends towards the lower city with a long and solemn perspective, flanked by buildings that show all the signs of the past.
Walking on the steps of Oregina is an experience that involves all the senses: the sound of footsteps on the slate, the smell of food coming from the open windows, the distant call of someone calling someone else from one balcony to another. It is the horizontal communication of a neighborhood that has no space for internal courtyards and uses vertical streets as elongated squares. An urban dimension that has more in common with an Italian neorealist film than with any neighborhood in any other European city.
Villa Gruber and the Green Hills
The Villa Gruber Park is one of the green lungs of these uptown neighborhoods: a public space on sloping land, with medium-sized trees and areas equipped for rest and play. It is not one of the great aristocratic historical parks of the Genoese east, but it is something more precious in this context: a neighborhood park, frequented by residents as a third space between home and work, with children playing and the elderly taking their daily walk.
One of the walking routes that goes up towards the Forte Sperone, part of the system of Genoa Forts included in the Parco delle Mura, also starts from the Villa Gruber area. It is an excursion of medium difficulty, suitable for anyone in reasonable physical shape, and rewards with views that span the entire gulf. Forte Sperone, built between the 17th and 18th centuries, is one of the best preserved defensive structures of the Genoese wall system, and reaching it on foot from Oregina – rather than with the shuttles from the Righi side – has the flavor of a personal discovery.
What to do in Oregina and Lagaccio
Authentic Neighborhood Life
Oregina and Lagaccio are multi-ethnic neighborhoods undergoing strong demographic transformation: alongside the historic Genoese families who have lived there for generations, there are Latin American, North African and Eastern European communities who have brought new shops, new sounds and new smells into the fabric of the neighborhood. This coexistence – not always free of tension, as in every large city – produces a street vitality that single-color neighborhoods do not know.
The Ecuadorian barber shops next to the long-standing Genoese hairdressers, the telephone shops with Arabic writing next to the historic newspaper shops, the bars where you drink Genoese coffee and those where you order mint tea: walking through the alleys of Oregina is crossing layers of history and present at the same time, in a way that few other neighborhoods of Genoa can offer.
Hiking towards the Forts
The position of Oregina, on the slopes of the hills that mark the border between the city and the Parco delle Mura, makes it an excellent starting point for excursions towards the Forts of Genoa system. Forte Sperone is the most accessible from here, reachable in about an hour and a half of walking on marked paths. For more experienced hikers, from Forte Sperone it is possible to continue along the ridge towards Forte Begato, Forte Puin and the other elements of the eighteenth-century defensive system.
The walk along the walls themselves is already a remarkable experience: the summit walkway offers alternating views of the sea side and the inland side, with Val Polcevera on one side and the historic center and the port on the other. It is a perspective on Genoa that cannot be found in any photography book on the city but that the Genoese who frequent the Parco delle Mura know and jealously protect as one of the best kept secrets of their city.
Where to eat and drink in Oregina and Lagaccio
The gastronomic offer of Oregina and Lagaccio is typical of the working-class neighborhoods of Genoa: small unpretentious trattorias, delicatessens with ready meals, neighborhood pizzerias and some fry shops that produce farinata and focaccia. The prices are among the lowest in the city, and the quality – for those who know where to go – is that of Genoese home cooking performed without too much elaboration: homemade pasta with pesto, vegetable minestrone, cooked stockfish, Genoese tripe. The simple traditional dishes, which in certain restaurants in the center are resold at fine dining prices, are eaten here for what they are: good, plentiful and honest food.
The neighborhood bars open early and come alive during work breaks: mid-morning coffee is the moment when the neighborhood gathers, greets each other, has a chat before returning to their jobs. It is not a gastronomic experience in the conventional sense of the term, but it is an immersion in the social life of a Genoa that does not show itself to tourists.
The presence of foreign communities has also enriched the offer with international cuisine at very accessible prices: Latin American trattorias, above-average quality kebabs, Arab bakeries with honey and dried fruit desserts. For those curious to explore these dimensions of food, Oregina offers possibilities that the historic center – increasingly oriented towards tourists – can no longer offer.
How to get to and move around Oregina and Lagaccio
The main access to Oregina and Lagaccio is the public lift on Corso Magenta, which leaves from the Stazione Principe area and goes up to the upper districts in a few minutes. The ticket is the standard AMT one and is also valid for the return or for local buses. Alternatively, you can access it on foot via the network of steps that rise from the historic centre, a longer but very suggestive route for those in sufficient physical shape.
For those arriving by car, parking is available in the lower area, near Corso Magenta, while in the upper districts space is very limited. The AMT buses connect Oregina to the surrounding areas and to the center. The proximity on foot to Prince Station – reachable in less than 15 minutes by walking down the steps – makes these neighborhoods very well connected with the rest of the city and with the regional railway network.
Where to sleep in Oregina and Lagaccio
Staying in Oregina or Lagaccio means choosing an alternative accommodation experience compared to the central districts, with the advantage of much lower prices, a highly evocative view of the city and the feeling of being immersed in the authentic life of Genoa rather than its postcard version. The historic center is a ten minute walk down the steps, the Porto Antico is fifteen minutes away, and Principe Station is practically below.
Explore the nearby neighborhoods too: if Oregina and Lagaccio have intrigued you, also discover our guides on San Teodoro and Granarolo, Castelletto and Centro Storico. Each area of Genoa has its own character and its own surprises.
The dimore di genovabb.it also include solutions for those who want to experience this high and popular Genoa, with the guarantee of quality and comfort selected by our team. Check availability on genovabb.it/booking-now and choose your corner of Genoa. To explore other neighborhoods, visit our guides: Centro Storico, Porto Antico and Castelletto.
The History of Oregina and Lagaccio: The Workers’ Neighborhoods
Origins and Historical Development
Oregina and Lagaccio developed as neighborhoods for the city’s expansion towards the hills during the 18th and 19th centuries, when Genoa’s demographic growth made it necessary to inhabit areas of the hill that until then had been cultivated or used as coppice. The first settlements were inhabited by artisans and workers who could not afford rent in the city center and who found more accessible prices on the hill, compensated by the effort of the daily climb to the port and the shops below.
“From the upper districts of Genoa the city reveals itself in all its beauty: an amphitheater of houses that descends to the sea”
— Paul Valéry, Notebooks
The name Lagaccio — from lago accio, or small lake or pond — refers to the presence of an artificial body of water that the Historic Genoese Aqueduct used as a collection basin in its complex water distribution network. The aqueduct, built between the 12th and 16th centuries and considered one of the most advanced water systems in Europe for its time, crossed these upper neighborhoods before descending towards the city, and its presence influenced the landscape and land use of the area for centuries.
The Historic Aqueduct as a Heritage
The remains of the Historic Aqueduct of Genoa constitute an architectural and landscape heritage of extraordinary value, and the route that follows the route of the aqueduct through the Genoese hills has become one of the most popular routes for urban hikers. The so-called Cammino delle Cappuccine or route of the historic aqueduct passes through areas of the hilly territory of Oregina and Lagaccio, offering an unusual perspective on the hydraulic history of the city and on the transformation of the hilly landscape over the centuries.
The surviving pillars and arches of the aqueduct, visible at various points along the route, are constructions of great functional beauty: Genoese brick and blackboard stone alternate in structures that have withstood centuries of rain and wind, testifying to the quality of medieval and Renaissance construction. Traveling even just a stretch of the aqueduct path starting from Oregina is discovering a dimension of Genoa that is not found in any conventional guide but which the city preserves as one of its most precious heritages.
The Community of Oregina and Lagaccio Today
An Evolving Multicultural Reality
Oregina and Lagaccio today represent one of the most interesting examples of an Italian multicultural neighborhood: the traditional Genoese community of workers and pensioners coexists with communities of Latin American origin – in particular Ecuadorian, with the largest community in the entire province of Genoa – North African, Eastern European and Southern Asian. This coexistence has transformed the commercial and social fabric of the neighborhood in ways that some photographs might capture but which can only be truly understood by living there.
The neighborhood’s Catholic churches offer masses in Spanish for the Ecuadorian community; neighborhood associations organize festivals that mix Genoese traditions with those of the host cultures; the children who play in the street speak Italian with different accents but share the same spaces and the same rules of play. It is not the integration described in institutional documents, often aseptic and formal; it is the real, noisy, imperfect and ultimately more resistant one that happens in the streets, schools and local markets of a working-class neighborhood that cannot afford the luxury of indifference.
Views and Routes: Exploring Oregina on Foot
The bleachers as an urban network
Whoever wants to really understand Oregina and Lagaccio must abandon the idea of moving on horizontal roads and embrace the logic of the vertical city. The stairways that connect the different levels of the neighborhood are the main infrastructure: some are narrow and irregular, with steps of different heights that have adapted to the morphology of the terrain; others are wider and more regular, with balustrades and lampposts that recall the monumental staircases of certain historic Italian cities. All are made of blackboard stone, slippery when wet and hot as bronze on sunny summer days.
Walking down from Oregina towards Principe Station via the steps takes about twenty-twenty-five minutes, but it is a journey worth double that of the lift: you cross different layers of the neighbourhood, you observe the open windows, the balconies with flowers, the children playing on the landings of the external stairs. It is a way of reading the neighborhood that no means of transport can provide, and that the Genoese who live there consider so obvious that they do not realize how special it is in the eyes of a visitor.
The Secret Alleys between Oregina and the Historic Center
Between Oregina and the historic center of Genoa there is a network of alleys, covered passages and semi-dark stairs which constitutes one of the most labyrinthine pedestrian mobility infrastructures in Europe. These passages — some of which literally thread into buildings through permanently open portals — were the communication routes between the upper and lower cities before mechanical stairs and public elevators existed, and are still used today by residents who know the shortcuts and want to avoid the main road.
Exploring them without a guide is an adventure at the risk of pleasantly getting lost: you find yourself in an open space that you didn’t remember having crossed, you emerge on a staircase that you take for the right one and then you realize that you are on a completely different side of the hill. The classic orientation system — sun, bell towers, views of the harbor — works here in spurts, because the views open and close continuously. But getting lost in Oregina is not dangerous: sooner or later you will emerge somewhere, and that part is almost always interesting.
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