At eight in the morning, when tourists are still deciding whether to visit the Aquarium or climb the Lanterna, Via del Pré awakens with the scents of mint tea mingling with the ancient smell of sea spray. It’s the hour when metal shutters roll up one after another, revealing shops that tell stories of distant worlds: Eritrean spices next to Genoese fishing tools, colorful Maghrebi fabrics peeking out between hardware stores that still serve the palaces of the old town.
Pré is the neighborhood that Genoa never puts front and center on postcards, yet it may be the most authentic of its caruggi. A strip of alleyways compressed between the sea and Castello hill, where the city’s maritime history intertwines today with the lives of those who have arrived here from far away, bringing with them flavors, languages and traditions that have transformed these ancient alleyways into a small world.
Those looking for the Genoa of tourist brochures won’t find it here. But those who want to understand how a port city reinvents itself every day, maintaining its identity while welcoming the new, must walk through these caruggi at least once. With eyes open and without hurrying.
Via del Pré: the street that leads to the sea
Via del Pré stretches for almost half a kilometer, from the intersection with Via Balbi to the port, following the path of the ancient Roman road that led to the sea. The name itself derives from the Latin “pratum,” the meadow that once extended to the shore, before the Genoese began reclaiming land from the sea by building their palaces on the water.
Walking toward the port, you immediately understand why this corner of the city has always attracted those arriving from the sea. The buildings huddle against each other, creating that cool semi-darkness that becomes a natural refuge on scirocco days. The facades, some still decorated with remnants of sixteenth-century frescoes, tell of when merchants and ship owners lived here, wanting to be close to their businesses.
“Via del Pré was the first landing place for those disembarking in Genoa, the place where land and sea shook hands.”
— Ennio Poleggi, historian of Genoese urban planning
Today the ground-floor shops host phone centers connecting Genoa with Dhaka or Asmara, minimarkets where you can find couscous next to farinata, hairdressers who know how to style every type of hair. At number 80r, Drogheria Torielli has stood since 1947 with its glass jars full of spices and hams hanging from the ceiling, a witness to when the neighborhood was populated by port workers and their families.
The intersection with Vico del Campo is the pulsing heart of the neighborhood. Here are concentrated some of the most popular spots among Genoa’s Bengali, Eritrean and Moroccan communities. The “Cafè Eritrea” at number 15r serves a coffee that rivals that of Bar Centrale on Via Soziglia, while the “Bottega del Maghreb” at number 12r offers an olfactory journey through cinnamon, cumin and desert roses.
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From Red Light District to Melting Pot: Social Transformation
To understand Pré today, you need to know its past. Until the 1970s, this was Genoa’s red light district, with its “houses of tolerance” that served sailors from all over the world. Via del Campo, made famous by De André’s song, was just around the corner, and the entire neighborhood lived off a nighttime economy made up of taverns, gambling dens, and establishments of dubious reputation.
Photo by Kseniia Zapiatkina on Unsplash
The closure of the houses of tolerance in 1958 and the gradual decline of the commercial port had left the neighborhood in a state of abandonment that lasted for decades. Buildings emptied out, rents plummeted, and Pré became synonymous with urban decay for Genoese residents.
The renaissance arrived in the 1990s with the first migration flows from Africa and Asia. Eritrean families fleeing war, Bengali workers attracted by opportunities in the service sector, Moroccan merchants who saw these economic spaces as a chance to start a new life. Gradually, the neighborhood rediscovered its vitality, different from the past but equally authentic.
“O Pré o l’é comme-o mâ: o cangia sempre, ma o resta sempre o mæximo.”
— Genoese proverb: “Pré is like the sea: it always changes, but always stays the same”
Today Via del Pré has become a social laboratory where the coexistence of different cultures is experienced daily. Bengali children play football in the same squares where the sons of dock workers once played, while Eritrean women stop to chat in front of shops just as their Genoese grandmothers did.
The Historic Shops That Endure
Among phone centers and ethnic grocery stores, some historic shops continue to tell the story of old Genoa. “Ferramenta Piccardo” at number 67r is an institution: four generations of the same family selling nails, locks, and work tools to residents of the historic center. Signor Giuseppe, eighty years old, still remembers by heart the number of every building in the neighborhood and always knows which key opens the old doors of the caruggi.
Slayer, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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At number 45r, the “Osteria do Pré” keeps Ligurian culinary tradition alive with a menu that changes according to the season and the availability of the fish market. Here you can still taste salt-cured anchovies prepared according to the ancient recipe of the fishing families of the village, accompanied by a glass of Vermentino from Cinque Terre.
The “Libreria del Borgo,” hidden in a side alley at number 23r of Vico Pré, is a small treasure for those seeking books on Genoese maritime history or novels by Ligurian authors. The owner, Ms. Elena, often organizes evening readings in Genoese dialect that attract residents from throughout the historic center.
These places serve as a bridge between the past and present of the neighborhood, creating unexpected connections. It is not uncommon to see second-generation youth, children of immigrants born in Genoa, frequenting the same venues where their adoptive Genoese grandparents spent their youth.
How to visit Pré safely and respectfully
Pré is not a dangerous neighborhood, but it requires the same common sense you would use in any popular area of a large port city. The best time to explore it is in the morning, between nine and twelve o’clock, when the neighborhood’s life is most vibrant and the shops are open.
Avoid the evening hours of the weekend, when some corners can become more lively than an occasional tourist might find comfortable. During the day, however, the neighborhood is perfectly safe and its inhabitants are generally available to give directions or chat, especially if you show genuine interest in their community.
The best route starts from Via Balbi, near Stazione Principe. From here you take Via del Pré and walk slowly toward the sea, stopping to look at the shops and savor the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the neighborhood. At the intersection with Vico del Campo it is worth deviating to the right to explore the side alleys, where some of the most characteristic corners are hidden.
Respect the people who live and work here: they are not part of a tourist attraction, but Genoese inhabitants who have chosen this neighborhood to build their new lives. A smile and a “buongiorno” in Italian always open doors, while photographs taken without permission can be intrusive.
A neighborhood that tells the story of Genoa’s future
Pré perhaps represents better than any other corner of the city the future of Genoa: a port city that does not abandon its identity but knows how to reinvent itself by welcoming those who arrive from the sea, as it has always done in its eight centuries of history. Here is experienced daily what we could call the “new Genoese identity”: a mix of maritime tradition and openness to the world that is born from the practical necessity of living together in confined spaces.
Photo by Nikolai Kolosov on Unsplash
The caruggi of Pré are as narrow as all those in the historic center, but they seem to expand when the aromas of kitchens from all over the world pass through them. The voices echoing between the medieval buildings speak Arabic, Tigrinya, Bengali, but also the thick Genoese of grandmothers who still lean out of windows to watch who passes by.
It is this complexity that makes Pré a unique neighborhood, far from both tourist folklore and the rhetoric of integration. Here coexistence is not a social project but a daily necessity, resolved with the pragmatism that has always characterized Genoese people of every origin.
Those who visit Pré with curious eyes and without prejudice discover a piece of Genoa that they will hardly forget. Not for the monumental beauty of its buildings or the exceptionality of its views, but for the authenticity of a community that rewrites every day what it means to be Genoese in the 21st century.
Genoa knows how to surprise those who have the courage to explore it beyond established tourist routes. Our residences in the heart of the historic center are the ideal starting point for discovering neighborhoods like Pré with the calm and curiosity they deserve. Because the true Superba reveals itself only to those who know how to look beyond appearances, in the alleys where history continues to be written every day.
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