Genoa Weekend

Genoa is a city that reveals itself vertically. Streets climb, elevators disappear into hillsides, and funiculars pull you from the dense medieval center up to quieter neighborhoods perched above the port.

We spent four days in Genoa in mid-March. It had been 9 years since we were last in this Ligurian city, and we were eager to get reacquainted. The plan was simple: wander the historic center, visit a few museums, and eat well. The highlight ended up being a short hike that stitched together two of Genoa’s hillside transport lines. See Above Genoa: A Short Hike Over a Vertical City.

Arrival ~ Vertical Shortcuts ~ Museums ~ Food

Genoa rewards curiosity. The best moments often come from simply following a stairway, elevator sign, or narrow street uphill. Here are 30 photos capturing our curiosity and hopefully motivating yours.

  

Arrival

Thursday.

Getting to Genoa from Bergamo is straightforward by train. We took a morning Trenord train from Bergamo to Milano Centrale and then an Intercity to Genova Piazza Principe.

After arriving around midday we immediately immersed ourselves in the hustle and bustle of Via S. Luca looking for our first food stop of the trip, Ostaia De Banchi, a slow food pick. "Ostaia" is the term for osteria in the Genoese dialect (Zeneize) and is widely used across Genoa and the Liguria region to denote a traditional, informal tavern or restaurant.

After a satisfying introduction, we had a quick stop at TAZZE PAZZE Specialty Coffee under the Archivolto delle Cinque Lampadi, a historic passage located in the heart of Genoa's medieval center (the caruggi), connecting Vico delle Cinque Lampadi with the square of the same name. It was lightly raining, but we were dry under the archway. And, as if to welcome us to the city, a huge rat lumbered by and ducked down a sewer drain. We were shocked and then chuckled and carried on.

Genoa is dense and labyrinthine: narrow caruggi open suddenly into small squares, churches, and busy commercial streets. As you near the Piazza De Ferrari with its impressive fountain, the city opens up more. Our lodging for the three nights was just a few steps from the fountain at the Hotel Bristol Palace.

Hotel Bristol Palace is an elegant Art Nouveau building, one of the best-known structures of Genoa. Built between the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Bristol Palaces sits along Via XX Settembre, a series of elegant buildings. During the Second World War, the Germans occupied it as their headquarters, building a secret tunnel to the port of Genoa. Then, after the war, the Italian Committee for the Liberation of Northern Italy made it their headquarters. The oval spiral staircase is worth a look!

After a brief break, we went back out to find the Museo dell'Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, a free museum with a small and particular collection. After the museum, we headed to the nearby Galleria Giuseppe Mazzini, an elegant nineteenth‑century arcade with shops and cafés. We loitered outside a hi‑fi store inside the gallery and admired a “Dark Side of the Moon” turntable on display.

Then, we headed uphill. A quick elevator ride brought us to Belvedere Castelletto, one of the best mid‑city viewpoints. The sun was setting, and the view stretched over the rooftops of the historic center toward the port. A perfect introduction to Genoa.

Vertical Shortcuts

Friday.

The next day we explored one of the city’s hilltop landmarks: Castello d’Albertis, the former home of sea captain Enrico Alberto d’Albertis. The castle is home to Museo delle Culture del Mondo, which turned out to be quite interesting.

After visiting the castle, we descended using one of Genoa’s more unusual pieces of infrastructure: the Ascensore Castello d'Albertis–Montegalletto. The system is part tunnel train and part vertical elevator, carrying passengers about 236 meters through a hillside tunnel and then lifting them up or down about 72 meters. Very cool!

Genoa has an entire network of these hillside connectors—funiculars, lifts, and escalators—each solving the same problem: how to move people between the narrow coastal strip and the steep terrain rising immediately behind it. Walking around Genoa, you constantly notice signs pointing to elevators and funiculars. Poke your nose in and explore. They appear in unexpected places—inside buildings, behind archways, or at the end of narrow lanes.

These systems make it easy to reach the ridges above the city without a long climb. And that gave us the idea for a short hike on our last morning. Instead of hiking up from the center, we would let the funicular do the hard work.

On the way to Ostaia a Ribotta (see below) for lunch, we discovered a beautiful Monstera deliciosa growing alongside the Salita di Sa. Gerolamo. The Monstera was in bloom and such a pleasure to see growing “wild” in the city. It’s fun when the sight of a plant can make you happy, and this one did.

Later that afternoon, we visited MOG Mercato Orientale, a large indoor food market just off Via XX Settembre. The market was only partially open when we arrived but still lively, and we stocked up on dried fruit and nuts: pecans, walnuts, raisins, apricots, figs, and pignoli.

The previous day at Ostaia De Bianchi we learned about the herb mix called preboggión or prebuggiún. This mix comes from wild herbs found in the hills and is used in soups and pasta fillings among other things. The mix is cooked briefly boiled before using. The name preboggión harks back to that action. We caught a glimpse of the wild greens being sold.

The mix includes dandelion, borage, chicory, nettle, pimpinella, silene, and other springtime herbs.

Museums

Saturday.

Today, we focused on museums that were not the Musei di Strada Nuova (Via Garibaldi) since we visited them last time. For sure there were new exhibits to see, but it was about secondary sights today. 

On Thursday, we visited the Museo dell'Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti. On Friday, we visited the Castello d'Albertis–Montegalletto. Two warm-up museums for today's museums.

Musei Nazionali di Genova - Palazzo Spinola

A quiet palace tucked away in the densely packed labyrinth of streets; this palace has a small hall of mirrors and an interesting area showing the kitchen of the palace.


Chiesa and Oratorio di San Filippo Neri

While not technically a museum, a worthy stop. The church and interesting oratorio (next door) dedicated to Saint Philip Neri (1515 – 1595), a highly influential priest during the Counter-Reformation.

The Counter-Reformation emphasized a return to sincere piety. Neri founded the Oratory, which were informal gatherings in which laypeople and clergy studied the Bible, discussed church history, and prayed together. While many Counter-Reformation figures were stern and austere, Neri proved that holiness and humor could coexist.

Musei Nazionali di Genova - Palazzo Reale

Unfortunately, the palace was under major reconstruction, so we only saw a small part and not the garden. However, all this was made up for with a long conversation with a docent about Odone of Savoy.

Odone of Savoy (1846–1866) was a younger son of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of unified Italy. Frail and in poor health for most of his short life, Odone never played a political or military role, but he became known for his refined cultural interests, especially in art collecting. He assembled a notable collection of decorative arts, prints, and Asian objects—unusual at the time for an Italian royal—which reflected the broader 19th-century European fascination with Japonisme and global material culture.

Museo d'Arte Orientale Edoardo Chiossone

Half the fun of going to this museum is arriving. You climb this lush little hill in the middle of the city, with a waterfall, and different paths.

Edoardo Chiossone (1833 – 1898) was an Italian engraver and painter who became a key figure in the modernization of Japan during the Meiji period. Chiossone spent a good part of his life (and died) in Japan. He designed the first banknotes for the country. He built one of the most important collections of Japanese art later housed in Genoa and what makes up the collection we see today.

Odone of Savoy’s connection to Edoardo Chiossone is indirect but meaningful: both were part of the same cultural moment that elevated Japanese art in Europe. While there is no strong evidence of a personal relationship (the docent claimed otherwise...TBD), Odone’s collecting interests overlapped with and helped legitimize the kind of cross-cultural appreciation that Chiossone would later deepen and institutionalize.

Food

Lest you think we didn’t eat well, think again and we’d be remiss not to mention all the Slow Food places we tried! We felt we hit our objective of eating well, and at reasonable prices to boot. We tried to eat a bigger lunch and go lighter for dinner (think street food).

All the Slow Food places we tried were easy walking distance from say, Cattedrale di San Lorenzo (duomo), which is center city. (Also to be seen: the fabulous, coiffed lions guard either side of the church entrance.) In fact, Genova we found was walkable.

Thursday Lunch: Ostaia De Banchi

Our re-introduction to Genoa, just fresh off the train, was this out-of-the-way osteria. Well-executed dishes, we had trenette al pesto con patate e fagiolini, succulent polpette di carne con carciofi, and prescinsù (tiramisù made with Genovese cheese).

Thursday Dinner: Tapullo Street Genova

In Genoese dialect, tapullo refers to a quick, improvised fix — literally “a patch,” “a makeshift repair,” or “a workaround.” The verb behind it, tapullare, means: “to patch something up”, “to fix something on the fly”, or “to make do and make it work”. But the Genoese nuance goes deeper: it’s not just a sloppy fix. It’s the proudly resourceful kind of repair — the ability to take something that isn’t working and give it a new life with ingenuity. At Tapullo Street, traditional dishes are “patched” or reimagined for modern street‑food style, without losing their roots.

We had some delicious stuffed focaccia here (one with tripe) and delicious pansotti here. I pansotti (or pansoti in Ligurian) are a fresh stuffed pasta typical of Liguria, particularly the Genoa area characterized by their triangular or crescent shape and their filling of wild herbs (prebuggiùn) and ricotta, they are traditionally enjoyed with a rich walnut sauce


Friday Lunch: Ostaia a Ribotta

Just under the Belvedere Castelletto, at the Ostaia a Ribotta we had a leisurely lunch built around local dishes like cappon magro and mandilli “de sea” al pesto. The former is a pyramid-shaped seafood and vegetable salad. "Lean Capon" historically was a dish for Lent and other meatless (lean) days when Catholic families could not eat meat, such as the fatty poultry capon. While it started as a humble meal for fishermen and servants made from leftovers, it evolved during the Baroque era into a "sumptuous" centerpiece for the nobility. The mandilli is a traditional pasta that literally translates to "silk handkerchiefs" in the Ligurian dialect. It is rolled incredibly thin, often until it is nearly transparent, giving it a delicate, "silky" feel that melts in your mouth.


Friday Dinner: Le Delizie dell’Amico

Tonight, like the night previous, something lighter and more toward street food. Friendly place and a selection of farinata and focaccia to grab and go or eat there. Farinata or farinata di ceci is a thin, unleavened pancake or crêpe made from chickpea flour. Farinata is considered a staple food on the northwest Mediterranean coast, including Genoa.

This was probably the place we’d say failed to wow us the most. Some of the food presented had been sitting around for a while and disposable plates and utensils were a bit of a letdown. Okay, the onion “pie” was delicious.

Saturday Lunch: Trattoria Mangiabuono

A simple no-fuss trattoria where you can taste some of the Genovese specialties, like:

• Lattughe ripiene (“stuffed lettuces”), which are little rolls of blanched lettuce leaves filled with a savory meat-and-vegetable mixture, then simmered gently in broth.
• Cima genovese, a traditional Ligurian stuffed veal breast. It’s essentially a pocket of veal sewn shut and filled with a savory mixture, then gently simmered and served cold in thin slices.
• Tamaxelle, which comes from the traditional cucina povera of Genoa, where nothing was wasted. After making broth, the boiled meat was too precious to throw away, so it became the base for these flavorful croquettes.

We tried these and more and were very happy.

Saturday Dinner: Sà Pesta

If one name keeps coming up when searching for food options in Genoa, it’s this place Sà Pesta. The name means sale pestato (fino), that is, “refined salt” referring to old salt shops where coarse salt was ground fine for customers.

If you don’t have a reservation, one strategy is to go around 7 pm and you’ll probably get a seat but have to be out before 8 pm.

Sunday Lunch: Trattoria delle Grazie

A nice lunch to round out the weekend before we headed back to Bergamo. All the favorites were there and done well, including, by now, old favorites, cappon magro, mandilli, and lattughe ripiene. It’s a bustling spot and hard to get into. We saw many folks turned away so reserve ahead of time, especially on Sunday.

20 food photos from a recent long weekend in Genoa, Italy

Above Genoa: A Short Hike Over A Vertical City

Genoa is a city that reveals itself vertically. Streets climb, elevators disappear into hillsides, and funiculars pull you from the dense medieval center up to quieter neighborhoods perched above the port.

We spent four days in Genoa in mid-March. The main post is here: Genoa Weekend. One highlight of the visit was a short hike that stitched together two of Genoa’s hillside transport lines—the Granarola and the Righi funiculars—to give one of the best views of the city.

   

Left: View from top of Granarola Funicular station in Genoa, Italy.
Center left: The Granarola Funicular car, bottom station.
Center right: The Righi Funicular arrives in the top station.

Right: Tracks for this hike between Granarola and Righi top stations.

Overview

Length: ~5.6 km
Duration: ~1.5 hours (top of funicular to top of funicular)
Elevation gain: ~221 m
Location: Genoa, Italy

Notes

On a gray Sunday morning,  we took the Granarolo funicular up into the hills above the city. The original idea was simple: ride up, wander a bit, and then take the same funicular back down.

Instead, we ended up walking along hillside roads and trails across the ridge until we reached the Righi funicular, which we used to descend back toward the center. Most of the walking time was spent on the percorso ginnico (gymnastic course) as labeled on maps. It’s approximately an isoline that leads to the Righi top station.

The walk itself isn’t dramatic in the Alpine sense. There are houses, gardens, small streets, and patches of trail. But the perspective is what makes it memorable.

At one moment you feel like you are in a quiet hillside village. Then you turn a corner, and the entire city appears below you—the port, the old center, and the Ligurian Sea beyond.

Genoa looks almost like a relief map from above.

After descending on the Righi funicular, we returned to the center for one lunch, coffee, and something sweet before catching the train home.

It was a fitting end to a trip that combined wandering streets, riding strange elevators, and briefly escaping the city by walking above it all.
 

  

Left: Granarola Funicular top station, Genoa Italy.
Center: Gardens above Genoa center.

Right: The Righi Funicular descending into the city.

   

Left and center left: Percorso Ginnico in Parco delle Mura above Genoa.

Center right: A trail above Genoa.

Right: Salita di Granarola.

  

Left: In the hills above Genoa, a polveriera (gun powder storage).

Center: Trail Genoa in Parco delle Mura

Right: View northwest toward Santuario di Nostra Signora della Guardia.

Le Vie di Misma - Trails 511 and 510

Every so often we head back toward Monte Misma, one of those mountains that sits quietly on the edge of Bergamo’s everyday horizon. It’s not dramatic like the high Orobie peaks, but it’s close, accessible, and threaded with trails that make for perfect short escapes into the woods.

This time we explored a small network of paths sometimes referred to as Le Vie di Misma, linking Sentiero 510 and Sentiero 511 for a compact morning hike. We were joined by friends who live in nearby Fiobbio, for whom these trails are practically their backyard. They wanted to show us one of their regular haunts, which made the outing feel less like discovering a trail and more like being given a local tour.

  

Views over Val Seriana and trails through anemone. Old roccolo on the right.

Details

Duration: ~2.5 hours
Distance: ~7 km
Elevation gain: ~514 m (max elevation was at 900m)
Location: Bassa e Media Val Seriana (Albino / Pradalunga area), Bergamo, Italy

The Route

We started walking at about 10:15 in the morning and finished around 12:45. Some time was lost to finding our friend’s independent-minded dog who decided to go exploring without us.

From near Albino station (which you can reach by tram from Bergamo) you can walk to Montecura Accoglienza e Ospitalità and find your way to the Morosini Cappella. This is the same as the start of our Monte Misma – Just Outside Our Window hike from January 2025.

From the Morosini Cappella, you pick up Sentiero 510 climbing gradually through wooded slopes on the lower flanks of Misma. The trail passes through quiet forest and occasional clearings before reaching the area around Stalla Cura, which marked the high point of the walk for us.

Instead of continuing down the usual route toward Pradalunga, we opted for a small detour: an unmarked trail that reconnects with Sentiero 511, creating a pleasant loop-like route and a bit of mild navigation fun.

  

Signs along the trail.

A Foraging Encounter

One interesting moment of the hike came near the Cappella del Martirio della Beata Pierina Morosini area, where we met a woman out collecting wild plants for dinner. Her basket included:

• Primula flowers – destined for decoration on swordfish
• Aglio orsino (wild garlic) – to make pesto
• Silene – likely for pasta stuffing

Encounters like this are one of the small pleasures of hiking in the Bergamo foothills. The trails are not just recreational paths; they are still part of a living landscape where people gather herbs, tend small plots, and move through the woods with purpose.

The hillside around the cappella is typical well-used woods in this area: too much ivy for our tastes. But someone thoughtfully planted prettier non-natives Edgeworthia chrysantha and Skimmia japonica to make up for it.

  

Country lane hiking. A tree with a cut ivy trunk. We love whoever did this.

  

Final Thoughts

This hike isn’t about grand vistas or long alpine pushes. Instead, it’s a short woodland ramble close to home—just enough climbing to wake up the legs and enough wandering paths to keep things interesting.

Trails like 510 seem like nothing when glancing on a map but are a different story when you are on them. And, in the foothills of the Alps (like Val Seriana), the trails are tricky and narrow almost as if by design. All to say we were huffing and puffing when we reached Stalla Cura.

All the effort felt lighter thanks to walking with friends/locals. When someone shows you their everyday trails, you see them differently: less as a destination and more as a lived‑in landscape. On the slopes of Misma, these woods are part of daily life for the people in the surrounding villages—and for a morning, we got to experience them that way too.

Flora

[Family] Genus species {Common name in English, Common name in Italian}

[Araceae] Arum maculatum {Cuckoo Pint, Gigaro scuro}


[Asparagaceae] Scilla bifolia {Alpine Squill; Scilla silvestre}


[Liliaceae] Erythronium dens-canis {Dogtooth violet; Dente di cane}
  

[Primulaceae] Primula vulgaris – {Primrose; Primula comune}


[Ranunculaceae] Anemone nemorosa – {European Wood Anemone; Anemone dei boschi}
 

[Ranunculaceae] Helleborus niger – {Christmas Rose; Rosa di Natale}


[Rosaceae] Prunus spinosa {Blackthorn; Pruno selvatico spinoso}  - likely, but not sure


[Rutaceae] Skimmia japonica 


[Thymelaeaceae] Edgeworthia chrysantha

[Thymelaeaceae] Daphne mezereum {Fior di stecco; Paradise plant}

Studying for the Patente and Learning the Language of Road Signs

Road Signs as a Language ~ The Vienna Moment ~ Sign History Timeline 

~ Why Italy’s Road Signs Feel So Chatty ~ Words vs. Pictures: Europe and the United States

~ How Many Signs Are We Talking About? ~ Reading the Street Differently

 

Studying for an Italian driver's license (patente) has introduced us to an unexpected new language: the language of road signs. What once looked like visual clutter—triangles, circles, arrows, and the occasional startled deer—turns out to be a carefully structured system with grammar, vocabulary, and very precise meanings. The deeper we go into the study materials, the more we realize that Europe’s road signs aren’t random at all. They are part of an international visual language born from a 1968 treaty in Vienna, designed so that a driver from Milan, Munich, or Marseille could read the road the same way.

Once you start noticing this, every signpost becomes a small lesson in translation.

Recently, we’ve been walking up in Bergamo’s Città Alta with a slightly different goal than most visitors. Tourists arrive looking for churches, frescoes, and views over the Lombard plain. We arrive hunting for road signs. A narrow street might reveal a perfect little stack: a red circle announcing a restriction, followed by two or three smaller plates explaining who the rule applies to and when. While others are admiring Romanesque façades, we find ourselves studying metal rectangles attached to poles and quietly trying to decode their syntax.

Road Signs as a Language

Like any language, road signs in Italy have a kind of grammar. Once you start studying them, patterns emerge.

• Shapes signal the type of statement. Triangles warn about hazards ahead. Circles regulate behavior—either prohibiting or requiring something. Rectangles generally provide information.
• Colors provide tone. Red usually signals prohibition or danger. Blue often indicates required actions or services. Yellow typically marks temporary situations such as construction.
• Supplemental plates—those small rectangles stacked underneath the main sign—act like modifiers in a sentence. They add conditions: times, exceptions, vehicle types, or directions.

Seen this way, a typical Italian signpost starts to look less like clutter and more like a sentence diagram. The main sign delivers the core message, and the smaller plates underneath modify the meaning. What once felt chaotic starts to feel almost grammatical.

Seen another way, many Italian signposts resemble a little piece of syntax. A pole becomes a vertical sentence:

Main clause (the primary sign) + modifier (time restriction) + modifier (vehicle type) + exception (residents, deliveries, etc.)

You begin to read them the way you might parse a sentence in a grammar exercise: first the main statement, then the qualifiers. That chaotic stack of metal plates begins to feel surprisingly structured.

And that realization leads to a bigger question: where did this visual language come from?

The Vienna Moment: 1968 and the Birth of the Modern Road Signs

The system most of Europe uses today traces back to the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals. The goal of the convention was simple: make road signs understandable across borders. By the 1960s, car travel had exploded and European drivers were regularly crossing national boundaries. A French driver entering Italy or Austria might encounter completely different signage systems, often relying on text in unfamiliar languages.

The Vienna Convention attempted to solve this by standardizing the basic grammar of road signs. Shapes, colors, and symbols were assigned consistent meanings so that a driver could understand a sign even without reading a word. A red circle generally indicates prohibition. A red triangle warns of danger ahead. Blue signs indicate obligations or services. The idea was to shift road communication away from language and toward universally recognizable symbols.

Today most European countries follow this system, including Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and many others. Once you start noticing it, you realize the remarkable effect of the convention: a driver can move across thousands of kilometers and still understand the road’s visual language.

Of course, not every country signed on. The United States, for example, relies on its own standard, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), which historically favors text-based instructions like "No Left Turn" or "Wrong Way." That difference becomes obvious when you compare American signs to their European counterparts—one reads like a sentence, the other like a pictogram.

For someone studying for the Italian license (patente), this historical footnote becomes surprisingly practical. What you are really learning is not just Italy’s road rules, but a shared visual vocabulary that stretches across much of Europe.

Sign History Timeline

1909 — First international road sign agreement

The Paris Convention on Road Traffic introduces the first attempt to standardize road signs internationally. Only a small set of four warning signs are agreed upon (such as bumps, curves, railroad crossings, and intersections), but it establishes the idea that drivers should be able to recognize signs across borders.

1935 — United States standardizes road signs

The first edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is published in the United States, creating a national standard for traffic signs, signals, and road markings.

1949 — Early international attempt

The Geneva Convention on Road Signs and Signals attempts to harmonize signage internationally, but adoption is uneven and many countries continue using different systems.

1968 — The Vienna Convention

The Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals establishes the modern symbol-based system used across most of Europe. Shapes, colors, and pictograms are standardized so drivers can understand signs regardless of language.

Today, thanks to these efforts, much of Europe shares a common visual vocabulary for the road. A driver can cross borders—from Italy to Austria to Germany—and still read the road almost instinctively.

The Vienna Convention defines the grammar of European road signs, but each country still speaks the language with its own accent. Italy’s ZTL signs, driveway permits (passo carrabile), and local traffic zones are good examples of how national systems layer their own rules onto the shared visual vocabulary.

Why Italy’s Road Signs Feel So Chatty

If the Vienna Convention established the grammar of modern road signs, Italy sometimes feels like the place where that grammar gets… enthusiastically used. Spend time walking or driving through an Italian town and you quickly encounter the phenomenon of the sign stack: a pole with several plates layered underneath the main sign.

A typical example might look like this:

• No entry
• Except residents
• Except deliveries
• Between certain hours
• For vehicles under a specific weight

Each additional plate modifies the rule above it. By the time you reach the bottom of the stack, the sign has effectively become a small paragraph of traffic law.

This density is not accidental. Italy’s urban landscape is unusually layered. Many streets in historic centers were laid out centuries before cars existed. Modern traffic rules—parking zones, delivery windows, pedestrian protections, resident permits, and tourist access—have all been added onto streets that were originally designed for horses, carts, and pedestrians. The result is a regulatory palimpsest where each generation adds another plate to the signpost.

What initially looks like bureaucratic overcommunication is often simply the city explaining how to make a medieval street work in the 21st century.

Words vs. Pictures: Europe and the United States

Another thing you notice once you start studying road signs is how different the European system feels compared to the American one.

In Europe, thanks largely to the Vienna Convention, the system leans heavily on pictograms. A driver sees symbols—arrows, bicycles, falling rocks, deer—and interprets them visually. The goal is immediate recognition regardless of language.

The United States took a different path. American signage developed under the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) and historically relied more on written instructions. Signs often spell things out directly: "No Left Turn," "Wrong Way," or "Do Not Enter."

Both systems work, but they communicate differently. American signs read like short sentences. European signs behave more like icons in a visual language.

For someone studying for the Italian patente, this difference becomes clear very quickly. The challenge isn’t memorizing phrases. It’s learning to read a symbolic vocabulary—and once you do, you begin to see the road itself as a kind of text written in shapes, colors, and stacked modifiers.

How Many Signs Are We Talking About?

All of this raises an obvious question: does Italy actually have more road signs than other countries, or does it simply feel that way?

Precise numbers are difficult to find because traffic authorities usually track signs as infrastructure assets rather than reporting them per kilometer of road. Still, transportation studies and municipal inventories give a rough sense of scale.

On urban roads in Europe, you might expect somewhere between 10 and 20 signs per kilometer, depending on the complexity of the street network. Countries such as France and Germany tend to fall within that range. The United States is often somewhat lower, partly because its road networks are newer, wider, and less layered with restrictions.

Italy—especially in historic cities—often pushes toward the upper end of the spectrum. Narrow medieval streets, pedestrian zones, resident parking rules, delivery windows, and vehicle restrictions all require additional signage. Each exception or condition usually appears as another plate attached beneath the main sign.

The result is not necessarily more rules than elsewhere, but rather more visible explanations of those rules. A single intersection in a historic Italian center might display a full stack of signs describing who can enter, when, and under what conditions.

Once you start studying for the patente, these stacks stop looking like bureaucratic noise and start looking like something else entirely: a dense but readable grammar of how the street is supposed to work.

Reading the Street Differently

Studying for the patente has changed how we look at Italian streets. What once felt like visual overload, with poles crowded with signs and small metal plates, now feels oddly reassuring. The system isn’t haphazard. There is logic behind it, and even a bit of European diplomacy.

Those circles, triangles, and pictograms are part of a shared agreement stretching across the continent. The same visual language that guides a driver through Bergamo or Bologna can also guide that driver through Innsbruck or Lyon. It’s a quiet form of European integration, embedded not in speeches or treaties we read about in the news, but in the everyday choreography of traffic.

And the density of signs that once felt excessive starts to look different as well. Each additional plate is a clue about the place you’re in: a narrow street protecting pedestrians, a delivery window negotiated with local shopkeepers, a resident permit that reflects the rhythms of neighborhood life. What looks at first like clutter is often simply the visible record of a city balancing many interests at once.

In that sense, a crowded Italian signpost is a small historical document. It reflects layers of time—medieval streets, modern cars, tourism, and local life—all negotiated through a few shapes, colors, and carefully stacked rules.

Once you begin to read them that way, the signs no longer feel chatty or chaotic. They feel expressive—and, strangely enough, a little elegant.

Travelmarx Spring 2026 Playlist – Powerless

A composite image of 36 albums used in this playlist.

Our spring playlist's title is Powerless, from the first song in the list by Balthazar. Theodor W. Adorno (1903 – 1969) said in 1951 “The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.” Happy listening. Spotify link.

Balthazar – album “Sand”, track “Powerless”
Matt Berninger – album "Serpentine Prison", track "Silver Springs"
Aim – album “Cold Water Music”, track “Cold Water Music”
Fabienne Debarre – album “Welcome to the Age of Broken Minds”, track “Welcome to the Age of Broken Minds”
Shana Cleveland – album “Manzanita”, track “Faces in the Firelight”
Wallners – album “Ships”, track “Ships”

Doc Rhombus – album “Distant Generation”, track “Never Thought”
Black Sea Dahu – album “Ants on the Wall”, track “One Day Will Be All I Have”
Honahlei – album “Nosara Tapes”, track “Gone Away”
Fellini Félin – album “Oddy”, track “Charlie”
Eola – album “Dang”, track “And I Know”
Heartless Bastards – album “A Beautiful Life”, track “A Beautiful Life”

RHODES – track “Sleep is a Rose”
Bertrand Belin – album “Watt”, track “Watt”
Jode – album “Jode”, track “Tomorrow is Gone”
Blanco White – track “So Certain (Something Reminds Me)”
Ocie Elliot – album “In That Room”, track “Forest Floor”
Al Nicol – album “Only Hoping”, track “Marylebone”

Sabine McCalla – album “Don’t Call Me Baby”, track “Sunshine Kisses”
Nick Hakim – track “Waiting”
Midori Hirano – track “Illuminance”
La Luz – album “News of the Universe”, track “I’ll Go With You”
Thomas Dybdahl – single “Hard Liquor”
Anna von Hausswolff – album “The Miraculous”, track “Stranger”

These New Puritans – album “Field of Reeds”, track “Organ Eternal”
Little Element – album “Fire”, track “Tel Aviv”
Timmy Thomas – album “What Can’t We Live Together”, track “Why Can’t We Live Together”
John Martyn – album “Grace & Danger”, track “Some People Are Crazy”
Nicolas Michaux – album “Les Chutes”, track “Amusement Park”
Pedro Mizuntani, Skinshape – album “Mostrando Os Dentes”, track “Sozin”

Robot Koch – album “Hypermoment”, track “Dreams”
Common Saints – album “Cinema 3000”, track “Sweet Release”
David Bowie – album “Young Americans”, track “Win”
Lapcat – album “She’s Bad”, track “Lavender”
Duke Garwood – album “Garden of Ashes”, track “Blue”
The Bamboos – album “Medicine Man”, track “The Wilhelm Scream”

Voting Against Our Own Interests: A Three-Layer Puzzle

Layer 1: The Human Mind Is Not a Calculator ~ Layer 2: Politics Is About Identity as Much as Policy ~ Layer 3: The Information Environment Shapes What We Believe ~ Putting the Layers Together ~ Laminated Card Version ~ The Real Question

Every election cycle someone asks a version of the same question:

Why do people vote against their own interests?

The question usually arrives with a mix of frustration and disbelief. It’s often asked about someone else: rural voters, urban voters, young voters, retirees. Whoever the speaker thinks should “know better.”

But the more we read and think about it, the more slippery the question becomes. What exactly counts as someone’s own interests? And why do we assume that voters make decisions the way economists imagine them to—coolly calculating costs and benefits like shoppers comparing tomatoes at the market?

Recently, our Scrapbook assistant pulled together ideas we’ve collected over the years. None of them fully explains the puzzle. But together they suggest a layered way of thinking about it.

The answer seems to live in three layers: psychology, politics, and the information environment.

Layer 1: The Human Mind Is Not a Calculator

Start with psychology.

People like to think they reason their way to political opinions. In practice, it often works the other way around. We adopt beliefs first, then construct reasons afterward.

Jonathan Haidt famously compared human reasoning to a lawyer defending a client rather than a judge evaluating evidence. Once we adopt a belief, we instinctively search for arguments that support it.

Several well-known mechanisms reinforce this tendency:

Cognitive dissonance.
When evidence contradicts our beliefs, we feel psychological discomfort. Instead of changing the belief, we often reinterpret the evidence.

Confirmation bias.
We seek out information that reinforces what we already think and quietly discard the rest.

Motivated ignorance.
Sometimes people avoid information entirely because knowing the truth would force them to reconsider their identity or social group.

In that sense, sticking with a belief—even when evidence mounts against it—can actually be the psychologically comfortable choice.

So before we even get to politics, the first complication appears:

People are not neutral processors of information.

Layer 2: Politics Is About Identity as Much as Policy

Now move up one layer—from psychology to politics.

If voters were motivated purely by economic self-interest, elections would look very different. Instead, political choices often reflect identity and belonging.

People vote in ways that signal

• who they are
• which group they belong to
• what values they want to express

That’s why voters sometimes support policies that appear economically harmful to them. The policy may conflict with their wallet but align with their moral worldview or group identity.

There is another wrinkle here.

Political scientist Suzanne Mettler documented what she calls the "government–citizen disconnect." Many people benefit from government programs without recognizing them as such. Tax credits, subsidies, or infrastructure investments simply appear as part of normal life. Because the connection is invisible, voters may support cutting programs they indirectly rely on.

In other words, people are not always voting against their interests. Sometimes they simply don’t see the connection between policy and outcome.

Layer 3: The Information Environment Shapes What We Believe

The third layer sits beneath both psychology and politics: the information system.

Democracy depends on something we rarely think about—a shared information environment. Citizens need some baseline agreement about facts in order to debate policy.

That shared environment has been fragmenting.

For most of the twentieth century, people in many countries consumed roughly the same news sources. Today, information is filtered through personalized feeds, partisan media ecosystems, and algorithmic recommendation engines.

The result is what some researchers call "bespoke realities".

Different groups encounter different information streams, reinforcing different interpretations of events. In such a landscape, arguments about competing realities quickly turn into arguments about reality itself.

And once reality becomes contested, identity becomes an even stronger guide for decision-making.

The cycle feeds itself:

• identity shapes which information people trust
• trusted information reinforces identity
• political choices follow from that identity

Putting the Layers Together

Seen this way, voting behavior isn’t a simple puzzle of rational choice.

It’s the outcome of a three-layer system:

Psychology
Identity and cognitive biases shape how individuals interpret information.

Politics
Group belonging and moral narratives influence how people translate beliefs into votes.

Information Systems
Media environments determine what information people encounter in the first place.

Put those layers together and something important emerges.

Voting decisions often reflect identity and narrative coherence more than economic calculation.

Laminated Card Version

Layer 1 — Psychology

Why individuals believe things.
identity → motivated reasoning → cognitive bias

Layer 2 — Politics

Why certain leaders and movements succeed.
anxiety → populism → demagogues → democratic erosion

Layer 3 — Information Systems

Why the environment amplifies these forces.
media fragmentation → algorithmic outrage → collapse of shared reality.

The Real Question

So maybe the question “Why do people vote against their interests?” starts from a flawed assumption. It assumes that interests are purely economic and that voters approach politics as rational calculators.

But humans rarely operate that way.

We vote as members of tribes, participants in narratives, and inhabitants of information worlds that shape what we see and believe.

Seen from that angle, the mystery isn’t why people sometimes vote against their interests. The mystery might be why we ever expected them not to.

A Hike from Val Taleggio to Piani di Artavaggio

Sometimes a food comes first and the place comes later. For us, Taleggio cheese showed up in our lives long before Val Taleggio itself did. Back in the 1990s we remember buying wedges of it at Whole Foods, intrigued by the orange rind and the slightly funky smell that promised something interesting inside. If someone had told us then that decades later we would be walking in the very valley where that cheese originated, we probably would have laughed. Yet here we are, boots on the trail in Val Taleggio, hiking toward the high meadows of Piani di Artavaggio.

  

View of Pizzino from just above Reggetto trail 150.

The tracks from Reggetto (Val Taleggio) to Piani di Artavaggio.

Monte Sodadura - Piani di Artavaggio (Lecco).

Overview

Length: 15.9 km
Duration: 4.5 hours (not including lunch, this time is up and back)
Elevation: 911 m, start point 960 m, highest point 1860 m
Location: Italy, Bergamo, Val Brembana, Val Taleggio

Notes

Today we took a hike from Val Taleggio to the Piani di Artavaggio. Val Taleggio is in the Province of Bergamo and Piani di Artavaggio is in the Province of Lecco.

Val Taleggio is a valley reachable from Val Brembana. From Bergamo you pass through San Pellegrino (perhaps you’ve heard about its water 😉) and continue up valley to the next town San Giovanni Bianco and take a sharp left and head west. After a few kilometers, you enter what is called in Italian Orrido della Val Taleggio or the Val Taleggio Ravine, a 3-km-long gorge carved by the Enna River.

Most people arrive at the Piani di Artavaggio via the Artavaggio cable car (from Moggio) as we did when we were last here hiking in August of 2023. (See Hiking Between Piani di Artavaggio and Piani di Bobbio.)

The “piani” of Piani di Artavaggio refers to the high meadows or alpine plains that characterize this area. Artavaggio could be a medieval Lombard or pre-Latin name describing a rocky, high pasture or a pasture associated with a person named Arto/Harto.

The CAI Bergamo Trail 150 is a mix of trails and dirt farming roads and isn’t the common way to reach the Piani. With trail 150, you start in Reggetto (Vedeseta), at around 960 m. Then you follow the signs, slowly climbing past summer pastures and serene stone structures in various states of disrepair. Once we reached the Piani, we kept climbing to reach Rifugio Nicola at around 1860 m.

Reggetto is a settlement of 13 full-time people as we learned at the local bar Nonno Fifi run by Fifi’s granddaughter. Fifi has been gone for about 15 years, but the fluorescent green building housing his bar remains as well as a small cheese shop located across from the bar. We couldn’t resist the temptation of getting some cheese where it is produced, so headed over. It’s called Società Agricola Locatelli Guglielmo. And we bought… you guessed it: Taleggio, but also strachítunt – a cheese not well known outside of Italy.

With our haul – our friend called it our bottino in Italian – we started to head back to Bergamo. But we didn’t make it far before we ran into the Coop. Agricola S. Antonio, a local cheese cooperative just below Reggetto. We said hello to the cows and popped inside to buy some yogurt, butter, and formaggella. After that, it really was back to Bergamo.

A carpet of snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis).
Trail 150 Reggetto (Val Taleggio) - pastures and old buildings.
View northeast from Trail 150 above Reggetto into the Orobie Bergamasche.

 
Piani di Artavaggio - vew from below Rifugio Nicola looking southwest toward Monte Resegone.
Trail 150 from Reggetto to Piani di Artavaggio.

  
Trail 150 from Reggetto to Piani di Artavaggio.

Cheese

Why is the area so famous? The answer is simple: pasture, tradition, and geography.

Val Taleggio and the surrounding Bergamasque Prealps have long been ideal terrain for alpine dairy farming. The steep slopes and high summer pastures (alpeggi) mean cattle are moved seasonally from valley farms to higher grazing areas. During the summer months cows feed on diverse alpine grasses and herbs, which in turn influence the flavor of the milk.

That milk becomes cheese.

The most famous product is Taleggio, one of Italy’s oldest soft cheeses, with roots going back at least to the 10th or 11th century. Historically it was called Stracchino, from the Lombard word stracch meaning “tired,” referring to cows returning from summer pastures. The cheese was later named after the valley where it was widely produced. Today Taleggio is a DOP cheese (Denominazione di Origine Protetta), meaning production is regulated and tied to this region.

Less well known internationally—but arguably even more interesting—is Strachítunt. This rare blue cheese originates specifically in Val Taleggio and neighboring valleys. It’s made by layering curds from two different milkings, creating natural blue veining without the industrial inoculation typical of many blue cheeses. Production nearly disappeared in the late 20th century but was revived by a handful of local producers and now holds its own DOP designation.

Walking through Val Taleggio you see why cheese production took root here. Pastures surround nearly every settlement, barns sit tucked into the slopes, and aging stone structures hint at generations of dairy work. The landscape itself feels built for milk and grass.

  
Views from Trail 150 Reggetto (Val Taleggio) to Piani di Artavaggio. Cows graze here starting in June.

Flora

The dominant colors today were late-winter earth brown in the lower parts of the hike or snow white in the upper parts. Piani di Artavaggio was still covered in snow. But that earth brown of the lower parts was punctuated by loads of late winter flowers, the usual but always welcome suspects listed below.

I’m surprised by how many Italians who we go on hikes with ask what this is. It’s one of the easiest to spot in late winter because of the color and shape of the flower. The three-lobed leaf shape and color reminded medieval herbalists of the human liver, and from that came the common name "liverwort". This is when people thought that God marked plants with a signature indicating which organ they could heal.

Spring crocuses are not where saffron comes from. It’s the autumn crocus, Crocus sativus. Spring crocuses have white or yellow stamens compared to Crocus sativus.

The lower regions of this hike, just outside of Reggetto, had some of the most beautiful stands of snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) that we had ever seen.

[Family] Genus species – {Common names in English; Italian}

[Amaryllidaceae] Galanthus nivalis – {Snowdrop; Bucaneve}
  

[Asteraceae] Petasites albus – {White butterbur; Farfaraccio bianco}
(no photo)

[Asteraceae] Tussilago farfara – {Coltsfoot; Tossilaggine comune}

[Iridaceae] Crocus vernus – {Crocus; Zafferano di primavera}
 

[Primulaceae] Primula elatior – {Oxlip; Primula maggiore}


[Primulaceae] Primula vulgaris – {Primrose; Primula comune}
 

[Ranunculaceae] Anemone nemorosa – {European Wood Anemone; Anemone dei boschi}

[Ranunculaceae] Helleborus niger – {Christmas Rose; Rosa di Natale}
  

[Ranunculaceae] Helleborus viridis – {Green Hellebore; Elleboro verde}
 

[Ranunculaceae] Hepatica nobilis – {Liverwort; Epatica erba trinità}
 

[Thymelaeaceae] Daphne mezereum – {Mezereon; Dafne mezereo o fior di stecco}