Secret Genoa: Staglieno, the Pre and the caruggi that tourists don’t see

At eight in the morning, when tourist buses are still unloading the first groups in front of Palazzo Ducale, at the Staglieno cemetery the silence is broken only by the sound of footsteps on gravel. Light cuts between the cypress trees, illuminating the white marble of the statues and leaving the porticoes in shadow. There is no one, or almost no one. Yet here, inside what Genoese people simply call “o çimiterio”, you’ll find one of Europe’s densest collections of nineteenth-century sculpture, and tourists arriving in Genoa for a weekend often don’t even know it exists.

This article is not a list of things to see. It’s an invitation to move a few bus stops away, through a few alleyways, from the path everyone takes — and discover that Genoa, the real one, begins precisely where the arrows on tourist signs end. It’s about a cemetery that is a museum, about a neighborhood that Genoese people themselves regard with suspicion and which instead deserves a different perspective, and about those narrow staircases between the walls — the creuze — that De André made immortal in a language that is no longer just dialect, but poetry.

Staglieno: the museum that no one calls a museum

The Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno is reached in just a few minutes by bus from the center, yet it remains absent from almost all quick guides to Genoa. It’s a mistake worth correcting. Designed in the nineteenth century and expanded in the following decades, the cemetery develops over a hillside crossed by covered galleries, neoclassical porticoes and a vista that rises terrace after terrace, dotted with family chapels that look like small temples.

Here the Genoese bourgeoisie of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries commissioned the best sculptors of the era to create works of moving realism: veiled women sculpted in marble with such detail that they seem like real fabric, sleeping children, stone angels that seem to breathe. You walk among these sculptures as in a gallery, and indeed many art guides define Staglieno an open-air museum of Italian funerary sculpture. It’s worth climbing to the upper part, where the green of the woods takes over from the stone and the panorama opens onto the Bisagno valley.

Among the most visited tombs is the one dedicated to Giuseppe Mazzini, a destination of political and symbolic pilgrimage for generations of Genoese and beyond. But the true value of Staglieno lies in wandering without a specific goal, letting yourself be surprised by a statue behind a column, by a forgotten inscription, by a ray of light that at certain times of afternoon cuts through the porticoes in a way that seems made for photography — even though this place was never designed with tourists in mind.

The Pre: the Genoa that truly pulses

Heading down toward the port, beyond Piazza Caricamento and the porticoes of Sottoripa, you enter another world. The Pre neighborhood — via Prè, to be precise, with its long street of the same name running through it — has a difficult reputation among many Genoese: a working-class, multiethnic neighborhood, somewhat neglected in places. Yet it is here that you breathe a Genoa that is alive, layered, as authentic as few other areas of the historic center.

Walking along via Prè means passing through grocery shops with specialties from North Africa, South America, and Eastern Europe, colorful fabric stores, small bazaars selling everything, bakeries that still turn out focaccia genovese alongside freshly made Arab bread. It’s a neighborhood that has welcomed waves of migration for decades — first from within, from Southern Italy, then from beyond national borders — and it bears these marks naturally, without rhetoric.

Among the side alleys, the typical “case a schiena” of Genoa’s historic center still stand today — tall, narrow buildings that climb toward the sky, letting through only a sliver of light between one building and the next. Those who pause to observe the doorways will often notice slate decorations, carved friezes, traces of a noble past that time and changes in use have layered beneath more recent strata. It’s not a postcard-worthy neighborhood, and that’s precisely why it’s worth taking time to walk through it slowly, perhaps mid-morning, when the shops are open and the flow of residents tells you more than any information panel.

Le creuze: stone pathways between dry stone walls

Anyone who has heard Crêuza de mä by Fabrizio De André at least once already knows the name, even without realizing it. Le creuze are the ancient paved mule tracks that connect the hilltop ridges to the sea, squeezed between dry stone walls that once marked orchards and olive groves, today often invaded by brambles and wild capers sprouting from the stone crevices.

“But if you just squint a little
you’ll be in the middle of a crowd of years, of faces, of gazes.”

— Fabrizio De André, Crêuza de mä

Walking them today means treading on fish-bone paving hundreds of years old, between small walls that tell of an agricultural landscape almost gone. Some of these paths still connect the city center to the heights today, others wind up from coastal villages toward the inland. Walking them at sunset, when the stone still holds the day’s heat and the low light ignites the dry stone walls, offers one of Liguria’s most authentic landscapes — far from postcard views, but far more genuine.

San Fruttuoso: the abbey reachable only by sea (or almost)

A little further east, nestled in a sheltered inlet between Camogli and Portofino, the abbey of San Fruttuoso di Capodimonte is one of the most isolated and surprising places on the Ligurian coast. There are no roads that reach it: you can only get there by sea, with ferries departing from Camogli or Portofino, or on foot via a trekking path descending from the mountains above — a couple of hours of walking through Mediterranean scrub with breathtaking views of the gulf.

The abbey, of early medieval origin, sits literally on the beach, with its arcades mirrored almost in the water. It is managed by FAI (Italian Environment Fund), which oversees its conservation and organizes visits. Getting there means devoting an entire day, but the reward is a place that seems suspended outside time: no cars, no paved roads, only the sound of waves and medieval stone that has borne the weight of history for centuries.

Pegli and Villa Durazzo-Pallavicini: the forgotten romantic park

Those who take the regional train heading west, just twenty minutes from Genoa’s city center, arrive in Pegli — a peripheral neighborhood that few tourists consider, yet it hides one of the city’s most surprising historic parks. Villa Durazzo-Pallavicini, with its nineteenth-century romantic park, was conceived as a true scenic pathway: small lakes, artificial grottos, a neoclassical temple, a miniature castle, an Egyptian obelisk.

The park was designed to be traversed as a visual narrative, with studied stopping points at every view, in an era when landscape gardens were conceived to surprise and move those who walked through them. Today, thanks in part to its distance from the center and the lack of tourist signage, it remains one of the city’s least crowded and most enchanting places, perfect for a leisurely morning away from the crowds of the historic center.

Why nobody goes there

The reason these places remain off the tourist radar is almost always the same: the perceived distance from the center, combined with the absence of widespread tourist signage. Staglieno is mistaken for a simple city cemetery, without communicating its artistic value. Pre suffers from a consolidated reputation over the years, often unfair, that discourages a quiet walk. The creuze are not “attractions” in the traditional sense — they are landscape, and landscape requires time to be appreciated, not a quick photo. San Fruttuoso simply requires organization: boat or hike, not a simple walk from the center. Pegli, finally, pays the price of physical distance from a historic center that absorbs almost all visitors with limited time.

These are all logistical reasons, not quality issues. Indeed: it is the very absence of crowds that makes these places more authentic, more quiet, more genuinely Genoese.

Practical tips for Saturday

For Staglieno, the best time is early morning during spring or autumn months, when the light is soft and the heat doesn’t tire you out climbing to the high terraces. Admission is free and several city buses connect the center to the cemetery stop in a few minutes.

For Pre, a late morning on a weekday is better, when the shops are open and the neighborhood shows its most authentic daily rhythm. It’s reachable on foot in ten minutes from Piazza Caricamento.

The creuze are best walked in the late afternoon, avoiding the hot hours of summer, with comfortable shoes: the herringbone paving can be slippery when wet.

San Fruttuoso requires a full day: check ferry schedules from Camogli or Portofino before you leave, and bring hiking boots if you choose the path on foot.

Villa Durazzo-Pallavicini in Pegli is accessible by regional train from Genoa Principe or Brignole station: perfect for a weekend morning, best in spring when the park’s flowers are in full bloom.

The right base to explore slowly

Genoa doesn’t reveal itself to those who rush from one monument to another in a few hours. It reveals itself to those who choose to walk, to take a bus to a stop they don’t know, to stop and look at a half-open door in a lane of Pre. Our homes in the heart of the city are designed precisely for this type of stay: not just any stopping point, but an authentic base from which to set out each morning to discover a different Genoa from that of quick guides.

If this idea of slow exploration convinces you, you can consult our city guide to organize your moves between the historic center and more outlying neighborhoods, and discover which corners deserve a longer stop. And if the real Genoa is already calling you, we’re here: you can book your stay and start exploring it at your own pace, without rush.