Genoa is a vertical city. Whoever wrote it for the first time was probably thinking of the Zecca-Righi Funicular, that ribbon of railway that rises from the heart of the historic center towards the hills in a route of just over a kilometer that crosses San Teodoro and Granarolo before reaching the Righi viewpoint. The funicular – inaugurated in 1901, one of the oldest in Italy still in regular service – is not just a nice tourist curiosity: it is the daily means of transport of a community that has chosen to live high up, close to the walls, with the paths of the Apennines close at hand. Going up there is discovering a Genoa that most tourists never see.
What to see in San Teodoro and Granarolo
The Zecca-Righi Funicular: A Journey Through Time
The Zecca-Righi Funicular leaves from Largo della Zecca, in the heart of the historic center of Genoa, not far from the Palazzo Ducale. The route extends for approximately 1200 metres, with a difference in altitude of over 200 metres, and has several intermediate stops – Sant’Anna, Portello, Righi – each located in a different neighborhood with its own physiognomy and its own community. The journey lasts about fifteen minutes, and in that quarter of an hour you pass from the urban density of the historic center to the open air of the uptown neighborhoods, with a progression that is also a change in atmosphere, sound, light.
“The racks of Genoa are elevators to the sky: go up for a few minutes and you find yourself in another world, among vegetable gardens and infinite panoramas”
— Ferruccio Ferroni, Genova Verticale
The funicular carriages have that robust and slightly retro look that befits a century-old facility: the wooden seats, the windows from which to observe the route, the metallic noise of the cables that pull the car up the difference in altitude. Every day the funicular transports hundreds of Genoese people who use it like any other means of public transport – with the ordinary AMT ticket – without ceasing to find normal what appears to visitors as a marvel. This contrast between the daily life of the residents and the amazement of the visitors is, after all, the most honest story of Genoa.
The Portello stop deserves a dedicated stop: from here there is a large panoramic terrace overlooking the city and the port, with a view that progressively widens as you go up. The Portello is a natural access point to the wall system and the forts, and is also the place where the funicular crosses the route of the ancient sixteenth-century walls, the remains of which can be observed integrated into the urban fabric.
San Teodoro: The Lavagna Stone Quarter
The San Teodoro stop is the one that gives access to the neighborhood of the same name, one of the most intact and least altered urban environments in popular Genoa. The alleys of San Teodoro are largely paved in lavagna stone, the grey-black schist which is the building material par excellence of the city and which here, in the hilly neighbourhoods, is still found in its original uses: paving, cordons, steps, even the shoulders of certain portals. Walking on that stone is like physically feeling the weight of Genoa’s history.
The stairways of San Teodoro are particularly evocative: they wind between buildings that have not benefited from the UNESCO renovations of the historic center and which therefore retain a patina of time which is, according to taste, decadence or authenticity. The buildings show the faded signs of shops that no longer exist, the sculpted portals of once noble houses that have become rental barracks, the remains of frescoes on the facades that the rain and humidity have made almost illegible. It is a different beauty from that of the alleys in the centre, more melancholy and more real.
Granarolo: Urban Gardens and Countryside Atmosphere
Going further up, beyond San Teodoro, you arrive at the Granarolo district: scattered houses, urban vegetable gardens cultivated by residents with the same care as the fields, country paths between dry stone walls, an atmosphere that is already countryside despite being just a few minutes from the largest Ligurian city. Granarolo is the neighborhood where Genoese people who want to be close to the city but far from it come to live: an only apparent contradiction, because the funicular solves the logistical problem in an elegant way.
The urban vegetable gardens of Granarolo are an institution of the neighborhood: assigned to residents through municipal tenders, they are cultivated with a notable variety of typically Ligurian vegetables – basil in large quantities (inevitable), chard, Lamon beans, tomatoes of various local cultivars. In summer, passing through these vegetable gardens while the owners work the land and chat among themselves is an immersion in a dimension of life that the contemporary city has almost everywhere lost.
The Belvedere of Righi
The funicular terminus, the Righi stop, offers one of the most complete views of Genoa: the gulf opens from east to west, with the Lanterna visible towards the west and the profile of the Portofino Promontory towards the east, the city descending towards the sea in all its layers – the hills, the intermediate neighbourhoods, the historic centre, the port, the sea. It is one of the classic panoramic points of the city, mentioned in all the guides, but getting there by funicular instead of by car has a whole other dimension.
What to do in San Teodoro and Granarolo
Hiking towards the Forts and the Park of the Walls
San Teodoro and Granarolo are perhaps the most natural access point to the Parco delle Mura and the system of Forts of Genoa. From the Granarolo district several well-marked paths start which reach Forte Sperone, Forte Begato and the long walkway along the seventeenth-century walls. These are excursions of medium difficulty, accessible to anyone with good trekking shoes and a minimum amount of training, with travel times that vary from an hour and a half for the shorter routes to half a day for those that complete the ring of forts.
The Forte Sperone, one of the most impressive in the Genoese defense system, can be reached from Granarolo in about an hour’s walk on paths in the woods. The structure, built between the 17th and 18th centuries and expanded several times, still retains its powerful forms today and offers an exceptional panorama from the main keep. Entrance is free and the structure is open at certain times during the summer months; even when it is closed, the external perimeter and the views enjoyed from the surrounding area are well worth the climb.
The Funicular as a Tourist Experience
For many visitors, the simple funicular journey from Largo della Zecca to Righi and back is in itself a sufficient attraction: the progression of the landscape, the stops in the neighborhoods, the final view from the belvedere constitute an itinerary of about two hours that embraces very different dimensions of Genoa. We recommend taking the funicular up and walking down the steps of San Teodoro, a route that allows you to explore the neighborhood calmly before returning to the historic centre.
Where to eat and drink in San Teodoro and Granarolo
The gastronomic offer of San Teodoro and Granarolo is limited but authentic. The neighborhood has some historic taverns and trattorias where you can eat Genoese cuisine without adjustments for the tourist palate: tripe, stockfish buridda, pansoti with walnut sauce, focaccia di Recco in the Sunday version — dishes that have maintained their original form precisely because the neighborhood has not had to adapt to external demands. The prices are those of a neighborhood of residents, not of a tourist area, and the atmosphere is familiar which makes every meal a neighborhood experience rather than a gastronomic one.
The historic bars of the various funicular stops – in particular the one near the Portello stop – are places to sit with a coffee and watch the people of the neighborhood go by, observe the commuters getting on and off, hear fragments of conversation in the Genoese dialect which is still alive in these upper neighborhoods much more than it is in certain areas of the centre. An anthropological experience as well as a gastronomic one.
How to get there and get around
The main access is the Zecca-Righi Funicular, which leaves from Largo della Zecca in the historic centre. The ticket is the ordinary AMT one and the funicular operates from early morning to late evening with a reasonable frequency. Alternatively, you can access it on foot from the historic center via the steps of Via del Lagaccio or through the Portello, routes that require good legs but offer a very different and very rich perspective on the neighbourhood.
Within San Teodoro you necessarily move on foot: the streets are too narrow for vehicles in many places, and in any case the pleasure of the neighborhood can only be enjoyed on foot, with the slow pace that the steps impose. To reach the Centro Storico and the Porto Antico, the funicular remains the best choice; from the Largo della Zecca stop you are a five minute walk from Piazza De Ferrari.
Where to sleep
Staying in San Teodoro or Granarolo is an unusual and fascinating choice: you sleep in upper Genoa, with the funicular as your daily means of transport and the city sparkling below on summer evenings. Housing prices are very low compared to the historic center, and the quality of life in the neighborhood is high. For those looking for an authentic and unusual experience, far from the tourist circuits but very close to the city’s major attractions, this is one of the most interesting options.
Explore the nearby neighborhoods too: if San Teodoro and Granarolo have intrigued you, also discover our guides on Sampierdarena and Fiumara, Oregina and Lagaccio and Centro Storico. Each area of Genoa has its own character and its own surprises.
Explore the genovabb.it residences to find selected accommodation solutions throughout the city, and book on genovabb.it/booking-now. For other guides to Genoa’s hilly neighborhoods, visit Castelletto and Carignano.
The History of San Teodoro and Granarolo: The Upper Town of Genoa
The Middle Ages and the sixteenth-century walls
San Teodoro and Granarolo owe much of their historical identity to the Sixteenth-Century Walls of Genoa, built between 1626 and 1632 to respond to the Savoy threat and to enclose in a single defensive system the hilly neighborhoods which until then had remained outside the protection of the medieval walls. The construction of this imposing defensive system – which extends for over fifteen kilometers on the hills surrounding the city – profoundly transformed the neighborhoods that arose at its feet, giving them a logistical and military function as well as a residential one.
The Portello stop on the funicular is not only geographically but also historically at the center of this system: the Portello was one of the main gates of the sixteenth-century walls, the access point from the city to the hills and vice versa. Even today the architectural structure of the access is partially visible, integrated into the urban fabric of the neighborhood in a way that the Genoese consider normal – because they have lived with it for centuries – but which amazes anyone who pays attention to the historical stratification of the urban landscape.
Daily Life in the Funicular: A Centenary Rite
The Zecca-Righi Funicular has completed over a century of continuous service – with brief interruptions for extraordinary maintenance – and in this time it has changed the way in which the neighborhoods of San Teodoro and Granarolo relate to the city. Before the funicular, reaching the uptown areas required a walk uphill of at least half an hour; with the funicular, the time was reduced to a few minutes, making it possible to live high up without giving up work and relationships in the center.
In the years of Genoa’s great industrial development, between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century, the funicular was the means by which thousands of workers got up early every morning, went down to the port and the workshops, and went back up tired in the evening to their homes. It was – and still is – a democratic and popular means of transport, without class distinction: the university professor and the worker used the same cabin, paid the same ticket, shared the same route. In this sense the funicular has been, for more than a century, a physical space of daily democracy in a city very attentive to social distinctions.
The paths of the Alta Via dei Monti Liguri from San Teodoro
The High Route as Connection
From Granarolo and the area of the forts, the trail system connects to the Alta Via dei Monti Liguri, the long-range hiking route that crosses the whole of Liguria from Ventimiglia to Ceparana, on the ridges that divide the coastal side from the Po Valley side. Reaching this route starting from San Teodoro – with the funicular to Righi and then on foot – is one of the most original ways to start a multi-day trek, literally starting from the heart of a big city and arriving, in the following weeks or days, in the Maritime Alps or the La Spezia Apennines.
Even for single-day excursions, the connection with the Alta Via opens up remarkable possibilities: you can walk along the ridge for a few hours enjoying a double view – sea on one side, internal valleys on the other – and then go down to Granarolo or Righi in the afternoon to take the funicular back to the centre. An Alpine excursion with urban departure and return, which is one of the most Genoese paradoxes imaginable.
San Teodoro and the Memory of Worker Genoa
The Neighborhood That Doesn’t Move
One of the most surprising things about San Teodoro is its demographic stability: unlike many of Genoa’s hilly neighborhoods which have seen their populations shrink dramatically over the last few decades as the highlands have been abandoned in favor of the lowlands, San Teodoro has maintained a relatively stable community of elderly residents and families who never intended to leave. This is partly the result of the funicular – which makes the neighborhood practically as accessible as any other – and partly of an attachment to the place that goes beyond the rational calculation of convenience.
The old people of San Teodoro talk about the neighborhood with a precision and affection that reveal a sense of belonging that is very rare in contemporary cities: they know where the bakery that closed forty years ago was, they know the name of every family that lived in every building, they remember the steps when they were even narrower than now, before certain works widened them. This oral knowledge of the neighborhood is a precious intangible heritage that no archive has managed to systematically collect and which is slowly disappearing with the generations that carry it.
Urban Art and New Presences
In recent years, San Teodoro has also attracted a new generation of residents — young artists, creatives, professionals looking for large spaces and low rents close to the historic center — who have begun to leave their mark on the fabric of the neighborhood. Some street art murals decorate the blank walls of the longest staircases, alternating subjects that recall the history of the neighborhood with more abstract or cosmopolitan ones. Small artists’ studios have opened in former artisan workshops, and some new places have brought a different menu compared to the traditional neighborhood trattoria.
This process of change is still in an initial phase, and has not taken on the aggressive characteristics of gentrification that has transformed certain neighborhoods in other Italian cities. San Teodoro seems able to absorb new things without losing its fundamental character, which is that of a blackboard stone neighborhood where daily life still takes place at a slow pace and where newcomers quickly learn that here the steps are respected and the neighbors greet each other. A fragile balance, perhaps, but so far resistant.
Practical Excursions: How to Organize the Day
The ideal combination for visiting San Teodoro and Granarolo in one day is the following: you start from Largo della Zecca with the funicular (the first train is early in the morning) and go up to Righi, enjoying the panorama of the final viewpoint. You then descend on foot along the route of the forts to Forte Sperone – an hour and a half walk in the woods – and from there you return towards Granarolo via the paths of the Parco delle Mura. In Granarolo we stop for lunch in some local trattoria, and in the afternoon we descend through the steps of San Teodoro towards the historic centre, exploring the alleys of the neighborhood on the way down. You arrive at the historic center in the late morning, in time to visit the Centro Storico or the Porto Antico before dinner.
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