Studying for the Italian Driving Test

Thirty Questions ~ Cultural Cues ~ Reading Carefully ~ Study Partner ~ 

Culture ~ Exam Day ~ Idoneo ~ More Than Driving

If you think about how to prepare for the Italian written driving exam, you might think to start by simply reading the manual. That's a good idea, but only up to a point.

I read the manual. More than once.

Looking back, however, I don't think the primary value of reading it was memorizing every rule. The value was building a mental map. Later, after I inevitably missed a question on a practice exam, I usually had a vague idea where to return in the book to understand what I'd gotten wrong.

The real preparation came elsewhere.

Thirty Questions at a Time

The final and practice exams consist of thirty true-or-false questions. Three mistakes or fewer and you pass. Four mistakes and you don't.

By the time I sat for the real exam, I had completed roughly 215 practice tests through the ACI (Automobile Club d’Italia) app. Toward the end, I was consistently finishing with one or two mistakes, just below the passing threshold.

At first, I wondered how many practice tests would be "enough." Fifty? One hundred?

After 150 tests, I began to suspect that the app was serving up different questions the more I used it. I can't prove this, but it certainly felt as though new questions continued to appear well after I thought I'd seen everything. Whether that was clever programming or simply a large question bank, the lesson is the same: don't stop practicing just because your average score starts looking good.

Practice tests don't simply measuring what you know. They expose you to what you don't know.

Note: I used the Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI) as the school to help me with paperwork and in theory to help me study, though I did all the studying on my own. ACI had in person and video lessons, so that was available. ACI was able to watch my process on the app and knew when I was ready.

Cultural Cues

I expected to spend months learning road signs, right-of-way rules, speed limits, and stopping distances. There is plenty of all that. More questions than I care to remember involved trailers, towing weights, and which license category allows you to pull what combination of vehicle.

There were also many questions about railway crossings and passing. If the frequency of exam questions reflects national concerns, Italy appears to spend a surprising amount of time thinking about trains and passing, il sorpasso. Drilling on trains makes sense because many roads cross tracks. But the passing questions exhaust you. It’s as if they are trying to cover every possible little 'pass' an Italian driver has tried.

Another thing that surprised me was how much space the Italian driving manual gives to what happens after an accident. Not just the mechanics of stopping, putting out the warning triangle, or avoiding further danger, but the duty to help. In Italy, this is not presented as a nice thing to do, or even only as a moral obligation. It is a legal obligation. Article 189 of the Codice della Strada says that a road user involved in an accident connected to their behavior must stop and provide the necessary assistance to anyone who may have suffered personal injury. Failure to stop after an accident involving injury can bring reclusione, the word that managed to stump me during the real exam, along with suspension of the driving license. 

This felt different from the way I remembered the subject being framed in the United States, where the emphasis, at least in my memory, was more on calling 911, not leaving the scene, and not making things worse unless you knew what you were doing. The U.S. is complicated because each state has its own rules. California, for example, does require a driver involved in an injury accident to stop, exchange information, and render “reasonable assistance” to injured people. But for ordinary bystanders, the California framing is less a general legal duty to intervene and more a Good Samaritan protection: if you voluntarily help in good faith and without compensation, you are generally protected from civil liability unless your conduct is grossly negligent or willful.

All of this about providing help as a bystander made me wonder if I'm up to the task.

Reading Every Word

Somewhere along my study path I realized I wasn't just learning traffic law. I was learning how to read Italian carefully.

I found that many of my mistakes weren't because I misunderstood the driving rule, rather the mistake happened because I skimmed. A single word could reverse the meaning of an entire sentence.

Words like sempre, soltanto, generalmente, può, or deve demanded attention. Miss one qualifier and suddenly a statement that looked perfectly reasonable became false. And watch out for the word “solo”!

Examples:

• Il giubbotto retroriflettente ad alta visibilità è utile solo quando si deve sostituire una ruota forata. [Falso]
• Il pannello integrativo raffigurato si trova solo se l'incidente è avvenuto in autostrada. [Falso]

Sometimes the challenge wasn't vocabulary but grammar. An adjective agreed with a noun I wasn't expecting. A pronoun referred to something earlier in the sentence.

A phrase like minor consumo, norme internazionali, or lungo quel tratto carried just enough nuance that reading quickly became dangerous.

Other times I encountered words I'd never seen before like dirigibilità and incolumità. These aren't exactly words that come up while ordering coffee.

Examples:

• Le frecce direzionali in figura sono a freccia combinata diritta-destra per corsie destinate a chi deve proseguire diritto o a destra. [Vero]
• Analysis: "le frecce" in general not specifically
• Nel caso in cui la sosta è espressamente vietata da una norma del codice della strada, l'osservanza di tale divieto è comunque condizionata dalla presenza di cartelli segnaletici. [Falso]
• Analysis: "condizionata" agrees with "osservanza" not "divieto"
• Tenere aperto il tettuccio scorrevole del veicolo comporta un minor consumo di carburante. [Falso]
• Analysis => "minor consumo" means "consuma meno", which is not true!
• Gli stivali ad uso motociclistico sono omologati secondo norme internazionali. [Vero]
• Analysis => "norme internazionali" doesn't mean rigid international agreements but standards.
• Attraversare un passaggio a livello senza rispettare tutte le norme previste, può mettere in pericolo l'incolumità di molte persone che viaggino su un treno in transito. [Vero]
• Analysis => "incolumità" just means "safety".
• Le sospensioni non collaborano alla dirigibilità del veicolo, perché questa è assicurata unicamente dagli organi di direzione. [Falso]
• Analysis => "dirigibilità" means "La dirigibilità è la capacità di un veicolo, di un aeromobile o di un'imbarcazione di essere guidato e manovrato con precisione, seguendo una rotta stabilita."
• Il bordo del marciapiede dipinto come in figura indica che non si può sostare lungo quel tratto. [Vero]
• Analysis => "lungo + noun", not “a lungo”

So, in a small way, preparing for the exam gradually retrained the way I read Italian. Instead of looking for the general idea, I learned to slow down and pay attention to every word.

A Study Partner

After finishing practice tests, I often turned to AI. Not to answer the questions for me, but to explain why I had gotten one wrong. 

Often the explanation wasn't about driving at all. It was about grammar, vocabulary, or understanding how Italian legal language is constructed. Sometimes I'd ask for the explanation in Italian. Sometimes I'd ask it to compare the Italian wording with English. Occasionally I'd ask it to invent similar examples until the rule finally clicked.

It became an unexpectedly useful tutor, especially for someone taking the exam in a second language.

It’s easy to take a snapshot of the screen after the practice test is over and feed it into AI to ask why what you were thinking was wrong (or right in some cases).

A Small Window into Italian Culture

One unexpected pleasure was discovering what the exam writers considered worth asking. Some questions seemed delightfully specific.

Apparently, it is important to know that throwing a lit cigarette butt from the window is particularly dangerous if two-wheeled vehicles are approaching. (I wondered, what if the cigarette butt was extinguished first? Or, it was just another car?)

Another question asked whether a motorcycle rider may weave between stopped vehicles at a traffic light. It isn’t, but you see it all the time.

One question wanted to know whether two mopeds may ride side-by-side outside urban areas. Again, no, but hey, it saves space on the street, right?

And one memorable question suggested that elderly pedestrians should be encouraged across the road by flashing headlights and honking the horn. Thankfully, that statement was false.

Examples:

• Gettare mozziconi di sigaretta accesi dai finestrini è molto pericoloso soprattutto se sopraggiungono veicoli a due ruote. [Vero]
• Il conducente di un motociclo può fare lo slalom tra i veicoli al semaforo. [Falso]
• Fuori dai centri abitati, su una stessa corsia possono circolare affiancati due ciclomotori. [Falso]
• Quando le persone anziane attraversano la carreggiata bisogna lampeggiare e suonare il clacson per farle attraversare rapidamente. [Falso]

The questions occasionally felt like tiny snapshots of everyday Italian life. Whether they reflected reality or simply the collective imagination of the Ministry of Transport, they made studying more entertaining than I expected.

Reading the manual also helped explain some things I'd already noticed living in Italy. One entire section dealt with noise — when to use the horn, when not to, and why unnecessary noise matters. We wrote about this extensively in the Noise, According to the Italian Driving Manual.

Exam Day

The actual exam was almost anticlimactic. About halfway through the 20-minute exam, I encountered a word I couldn’t remember the meaning of: reclusione. I had in my head other license-related terms like revoca, revisione, ritirata, and sospensione, but not reclusione.

The meaning of the word finally came to me (“imprisonment”) and then it was a matter of trying to determine if the activity of the question – betting on illegal street races – could lead to imprisonment. For a moment I forgot I was taking a driving test and wondered whether I'd accidentally wandered into a law school exam. I guessed wrong, and that was one of the two questions I got wrong on the test.

Fortunately, one unfamiliar word and subject area (betting/racing) didn't derail the rest of the questions or the results.

On the day of the test I went for the test at the motorizzazione (DMV), I was in a group of about 25-30 young people.  I was one of the last to finish. In the room adjacent to the testing room, the results appeared within a few minutes after everyone was finished. The results were on a single sheet of paper thrown on a desk. Everyone flocked around the sheet of paper, squinting at the very small text to find their name and see if they passed.

Students gathering around to see results after the exam. 

Idoneo

Passed. That’s what idoneo means in this context: suitable, adequate. That's what you'll see next to your name right after the exam.

A little later I received a copy of my completed exam showing exactly which two questions I had missed. It was oddly satisfying after months of preparation to finally see the scorecard.

More Than a Driving Test

Preparing for the Italian written exam taught me the rules of the road. It also taught me something about learning a language.

The manual gave me a map. Hundreds of practice tests taught me where the difficult terrain was. Careful reading became more important than quick reading. AI helped explain the places where grammar and vocabulary got in the way.

And somewhere between trailer weights, railway crossings, and questions about cigarette butts, I became a more careful reader of Italian.

Escape to Isolatos: Notes on Curated Remoteness

There is a recognizable Italian vacation subculture: the summer Greek island escape whose value increases slightly when the island is less obvious, the route is more complicated, and the story requires a flowchart involving an airport, taxis, ferries, and perhaps a night in Piraeus. This post is about a contradiction that exists during that vacation. 

The desired vacation we are talking about here is presented as an escape from ordinary life. Yet it unfolds during the most synchronized moment of the Italian calendar, clustered around Ferragosto and the August shutdown. It is an escape performed almost collectively. Offices close, cities partially empty, and people disperse toward beaches, mountains, and islands on roughly the same timetable. 

Enjoying sunset on the island of Isolatos.

The recurring conversation

It begins like this: someone mentions where they’re going in August. The name is Greek, melodic, and not immediately placeable. People pull out their phones to see where the place is. The more remote or unknown, the better.

These conversations start in late spring and early summer. Inevitably, the details include the number of people in the village and the best tavernas in the chosen remote spot. To be clear: the fewer the better for both.

The central idea isn’t simply escapism but a curated remoteness: getting away, but in a culturally legible way that can be planned, narrated, and appreciated by others who understand the code. The logistical difficulty of the Greek vacation doesn’t undermine the escape. It authenticates it. This is a small fraction of Italians, but something we have noticed, likely tied to the socioeconomic circles we circulate in.

We confess to falling prey at times to this desire too. We want curated remoteness, but also authentic experience and connection to people and places — even if the connection is just with someone changing the sheets or serving us moussaka.

To further point the finger back at ourselves: we recently spent upwards of six hours planning a possible Greek-island getaway, all the while thinking about remoteness. (We won’t tell you which island...because we don’t want y’all to be there.)

A direct flight to a large island is useful. But a flight to Athens, a transfer to Piraeus, a ferry, and then perhaps another ferry to a smaller island can feel more like an achievement. You have not merely booked a beach holiday. You have discovered a place. The route becomes part of the story told before departure and again after returning.

There is also a mild form of distinction involved in all this. Mykonos is too obvious. Santorini is beautiful but compromised by the fact that everyone has heard of it. The ideal island is recognizable to the initiated but unfamiliar to at least some people around the dinner table. Its obscurity is a feature and the island name itself becomes a credential.

At dinner

As we were writing this, we went for dinner up the Bergamo walls. Every summer, temporary venues pop up on the old city walls serving simple dishes with great views. At dinner, the 50+ group lamented modern travel: Too much is known; there are too many images of what to expect and what to do. They waxed fondly of times with just paper maps and hope to see something.

This is the same group who often talks about what we have called curated remoteness. Maybe the search is a reaction to modern travel, a need to recreate what it used to be like.

Some numbers

Ferragosto is a public holiday on August 15. The long August shutdown is a strong workplace and social convention that varies by industry, employer, and family situation, but nonetheless is powerful in Italy. ISTAT data show August as the central month of Italian summer tourism: in the third quarter of 2025, 39.3 percent of tourist nights in Italy fell in August, more than in July or September, and domestic tourists accounted for 53.3 percent of August stays. Those figures concern tourism within Italy, not Italian departures for Greece, but they support the broader idea of a synchronized vacation calendar.

According to the Bank of Greece, Greece received about 40.7 million inbound travelers in 2024. Just over 2.0 million came from Italy, an increase of 10 percent over 2023. That puts Italians at roughly 5 percent of all inbound travelers. In that year, Italian visitors generated about €1.23 billion in receipts, or roughly 5.7 percent of Greece’s total tourism receipts. Italy trails larger markets such as Germany and the United Kingdom, but it is plainly one of Greece’s important source markets.

The Italian data tell a similar story from the other direction. Banca d’Italia counted about 1.6 million Italian trips to Greece in 2024. Greece ranked sixth among foreign destinations by Italian spending, after Spain, the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Italians spent about €1.37 billion there. Greece accounted for 2.6 percent of Italian outbound trips but 4.2 percent of outbound spending.

Greece is not merely an archipelago awaiting Italians in linen shirts looking for a slice of remoteness. Some visitors take package holidays to Rhodes, Crete, or Corfu. Some arrive on cruise ships and spend a few hours in Santorini or Mykonos. Some visit Athens, Thessaloniki, or the mainland. Some are Greeks returning to islands they have visited for years. The search for the slightly obscure island reached by a sequence of conveyances is real, but it belongs to a segment of travelers rather than everyone.

Italians are not the dominant visitors to Greece, but they are not a negligible group either.

Homegrown

We suspect the idea of curated remoteness is much larger than Italy. It applies to countries with a certain wealth and vacation mentality. But perhaps the desire is more accentuated here because Italy has so many beaches, islands, and summer spots. In 2017 post Abbronzatissima: Notes on the Allure of the Suntan in Italy, we wrote that Italy is surrounded by so much sea, it must compel Italians to seek it out ritualistically every summer, a ritual bordering on obligation.

But Italy’s homegrown abundance of sea and the crowded nature of the experience (Italians and people from elsewhere) make some Italians – our sample subculture – more targeted in their search for remoteness. And that search leads them to Greece. Greece has more islands and more coastline than Italy, especially in the "island-dense, fragmented coastline” sense that matters for the Greek-island vacation idea. Uncharted frontier and new cultivated remoteness.

To be fair, the Italian “system” is set up such that vacation time is highly prescribed: August. Maybe the forced synchronization leads some Italians to look farther afield so as not to end up on a beach with other Italians.

We, on the other hand, have the flexibility to take vacations in different parts of the year. Italians are often perplexed when we tell them we are staying put for July and August, enjoying our adopted city, and not the sea or the mountains. We’ll take a vacation in the fall.

In the 2024 post Why do we travel?, we mused about why we travel at all. In our case, over the years the "why" has changed. Perhaps the observations in this post are just a passing phase for the group of friends we hang with.

Or maybe we are overthinking this: all this analysis is for naught and an Italian taking a vacation on a remote Greek island simply wants to get away from it all, Italy and their co-nationals. And that’s all.  

Happy summer vacation!  

Noise, According to the Italian Driving Manual

Noise On ~ Book Noise ~ Clacson Dialects ~ Clacson Meets Lden ~ 

European Driver, Quiet in Theory ~ California Dreaming Horn ~ 

Exhaust as a Personal Statement ~  Studying for the Exam, Clutching My Pearls ~ 

Maximum Moderation, Minimum Compliance

A variation of the image used in the SID Manuale, in the chapter on noise

Noise On

I've always had an interest in noise, and an issue with noise. I'm interested in noise's impact on people, why some people don't seem bothered by it, and why I am, and why is there is so much of it—NOISE—in the world. Past posts include: Noise and Nuisance; Bronzino to Babbage, A Field Guide to Italian Hotel Noises, and You Know It When You Hear It.)

So, it was with surprise and delight that I found a chapter in the Italian driving-license book on noise. In the SIDA Manuale della patente A e B (the Italian study book), noise is not treated as a vague annoyance, the thing you complain about while closing the window. It is classified properly, soberly, and a little optimistically as inquinamento acustico: acoustic pollution. Be still my beating heart!

This treatment of noise immediately elevates it. Now my crazy rantings on noise have backing. The truck with the loose load passing below the apartment at 6 am is no longer merely “that truck again.” It is part of Chapter 22.

The book places noise beside air pollution, fuel consumption, exhaust fumes, vehicle maintenance, and the broader civic duty of not degrading our shared environment. It is a high-minded little chapter and I like that. It imagines the driver as a careful, rational, socially aware person who maintains the vehicle, limits unnecessary acceleration, avoids useless honking, and remembers that the road is shared.

Book Noise

The Italian driving manual does not treat noise as a mere irritation. It calls it what it is: inquinamento acustico, acoustic pollution. Section 22.1.5 begins plainly and lists a few behaviors you see commonly when driving around Italy.

Here's the section of the book:

---

Il rumore prodotto dai veicoli a motore è causa di inquinamento acustico e di una serie di problemi di salute. I rimorchi vuoti, che sobbalzano eccessivamente, possono essere causa di rumore. Per questo motivo, ogni conducente ha il dovere di osservare le seguenti cautele:

• far verificare che la marmitta (dispositivo silenziatore) funzioni bene e sia di tipo approvato, sostituire la marmitta rovinata con una approvata per il veicolo, senza manometterla o modificarla
• evitare inutili e ripetute accelerazioni a vuoto, da fermi
• far controllare i freni se stridono (sostituendoli se necessario) e cercare di non frenare bruscamente
• non precorrere le curve ad alta velocità e no provocare lo strisciamento degli pneumatici
• sistemare il carico ed eventuali coperture in modo idoneo
• curare la manutenzione della carrozzeria e delle sospensioni
• chiudere delicatamente la portiera (anche per non danneggiare l'autovettura)
• per avvisare in caso di emergenza, usare il lampeggio al posto del clacson

Bisogna usare il clacson con la massima moderazione e nei centri abitati solo in caso di effettivo e immediato pericolo. Quando è necessario, suonare il clacson il più brevemente possibile.

Causano inquinamento acustico:

• marmitta non omologata
• uso improprio del clacson
• brusche partenze
• brusche frenate
• freni che stridono
• brusche frenate in curva
• carico svolazzante

---

Some useful translations:

• inquinamento = pollution
• rimorchi = trailers
• sobbalzare = jump around
• marmitta = muffler
• clacson = horn
• freni = brakes
• carrozzeria = car body
• carico = load
• svolazzante = fluttering about

What I like about this list of causes of noise is how ordinary it is. The enemy is not only the roaring engine or the modified scooter exhaust. It is also the rattling trailer, the squealing brakes, the door slammed too hard, the horn used as punctuation, the fluttering tarp behind a truck. Noise is treated as a hundred small failures of attention. I guess you could say the entropy of noise in that everyone sort of says "Not my problem, I'm just driving down the road". This is similar to what we observed in the post Notes on Entropy from a Courtyard in Italy, which concluded that the concept of everyday entropy is the slow unraveling of order in one's surroundings because many say "not my job".

The manual is not saying: never make noise. Rather it says: do not make pointless noise. It is a tiny civic ethic disguised as test prep. Of course, I ace all the test questions in this section! They seem so obvious to me.

This careful driver exists. Somewhere maybe? Or, possibly only in the illustrations in the book.

Joking aside, studying for the Italian patente has changed how I hear the street. Before, vehicle noise fell mostly into emotional categories: irritating, very irritating, and mostly “is that thing legally allowed to exist?” Now I have a point of reference, a chapter in the official driver's manual. The bad muffler, the squealing brakes, the horn used as punctuation, the rattling load in the back of a truck: these are not just sounds. They are categories of noncompliance and sections that at least I can console myself with and point to even if it doesn't really help.

Clacson Dialects

The word clacson looks odd to English eyes. It is the Italianized form of Klaxon, originally a trademarked name for an electric warning horn. Treccani defines clacson as a graphic variant of English klaxon, now used in everyday Italian for the acoustic warning device in a vehicle. In official language you may also see avvisatore acustico, which is more literal: acoustic warning device. But clacson is the word more commonly used. The word sounds noisy.

The manual says the clacson should be used with la massima moderazione, and in towns only in cases of immediate and real danger. Good advice in theory, but in practice it's another story. (Also, "maximum moderation" sounds less like driving advice and more like a rule for surviving modern life.)

Moderate your horn, your speed, your acceleration, your impatience, and we'd add perhaps also your expectation that anyone else has read the same page. Why? Because, in practice, the horn has many unofficial meanings in Italy. It can mean:

“I am here.”
“You are slow.”
“The light turned green 0.4 seconds ago, step on it!”
“I know you, hi!”
“I am entering this blind corner faster than I should and please be aware.”
“I am annoyed, and everyone within hearing range should be informed.”

So yes, officially, the horn is a safety device. Practically, the horn is a language. It has grammar, dialect, local idioms, and emotional range. It may be brief, extended, musical, accusatory, celebratory, or existential.

Clacson Meets Lden

While the Italian driving manual treats noise with admirable seriousness, as inquinamento acustico or acoustic pollution, there are no hard limits. The guidance seems squishy, basically "try not to make noise".

The European vocabulary around noise is more precise: Lden, Lnight, dB(A), exposure thresholds.

• Lden is the average noise over the whole day, evening, and night, with evening and night weighted more heavily because noise then is more disruptive.
• Lnight is the average night-time noise, especially relevant for sleep.
• dB(A) means decibels adjusted to approximate human hearing.

The European Union’s Environmental Noise Directive is not exactly a “keep everyone below this number”, but more a framework for measuring, mapping, reporting, and managing environmental noise. The commonly used reporting thresholds are around 55 dB Lden for day-evening-night exposure and 50 dB Lnight for night exposure. (Official legal text.)

WHO Europe is more direct in its health-based recommendations. Its 2018 environmental noise guidelines recommend keeping road-traffic noise below 53 dB Lden and below 45 dB Lnight. Earlier WHO night-noise guidance gives 40 dB Lnight outside bedrooms as a target to protect the public, especially vulnerable groups. (Guidelines table.)

This is all somewhat useful to know, though perhaps less useful at the exact moment a 50cc (cubic centimeters) moto is ripping down Via Pignolo making the left turn onto Via San Tomaso. (Ironically, a 50cc moto can make upward of 80 dB(A) of noise.)

So figuring out whether Italy has “done something” under the Environmental Noise Directive turns out to be its own small research project. The EU directive requires maps and action plans, but the results do not live in one tidy place. Some are reported to the EEA (European Environment Agency), some appear through ISPRA (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambiente) indicators, and many live with regions, cities, airports, railways, and road operators. Italy has implemented the directive through D.Lgs. 194/2005 and has reported population exposure using Lden and Lnight. So yes, the maps and plans exist. Whether the street below your window has become quieter is, as usual, a different and more personal question. Maybe in a future post, we'll dig into these reports but for now, we'll have to accept that it's being thought about, seems to be measured, and maybe work is in progress to mitigate exposure. (Glancing quickly at the reports shows road noise as by far the largest contributor to noise exposure.)

In daily life terms, 50 to 55 dB(A) is not the apocalypse. It is roughly equivalent to a quiet street, a refrigerator hum, moderate rainfall, or the lower edge of conversation. These numbers are not about one spectacular noise event, or whether your ears are immediately damaged. They are about cumulative exposure: the acoustic climate you live in hour after hour, night after night. A loud burst, say a 50cc moto, a truck, or a horn, may pass quickly and add energy to the average. But, more importantly, it interrupts the body. It makes you pause, tense, wake slightly, or lose the thread of what you were doing. Environmental noise is often the background soup: tires, scooters, brakes, engines, deliveries, a horn here, a horn there, all simmering below the level of catastrophe but above the level of peace.

So where are we with noise? The manual gives noise a better name: acoustic pollution. The EU and WHO go further and give it numbers for measuring, even if the averages wash it all out.

European Driver, Quiet in Theory

The Italian book’s treatment of noise is not unique. Germany has an explicit Umweltschutz category in its theory-test material, where unnecessary acceleration is not just wasteful but noisy. France folds le bruit et la pollution into the theme of using the vehicle with respect for the environment.

The vocabulary changes, but the fantasy is shared: the driver as a calm, technically competent, socially aware participant in public space.

Naturally, we started to wonder if Italians are better, about the same, or worse in terms of noise pollution. How would you even measure this?

It turns out that comparisons are not that easily had. A 2022 study in Environment International looked at road-traffic noise exposure across 724 European cities and 25 larger urban areas, using Lden starting at 55 dB. It found that almost 60 million adults were exposed to road-traffic noise levels considered harmful to health. But the study also noted a very practical problem: the underlying noise maps varied in method, format, and quality. So the question 'Are Italians noisier?' quickly becomes 'What did France measure, what did Germany measure, and did Italy count that street with the delivery scooters?' Still, the broad picture is clear enough: road-traffic noise is a Europe-wide problem, and in many cities a large share of adults live above the 55 dB Lden threshold. (ScienceDirect)

The health connection in the ScienceDirect article is not that a honking car directly causes heart disease, satisfying though that explanation might be. Rather, traffic noise disturbs sleep, raises annoyance, and keeps the body making tiny stress adjustments: heart rate, blood pressure, hormones, vascular strain. Over years, those small insults can become less small. In that sense, inquinamento acustico is not only a poetic phrase from the driving manual. It is a public-health phrase hiding in plain sight.

The Italian and more generally the European driver, at least on paper, are custodians of the shared atmosphere: air, fuel, fumes, tires, brakes, and sound. It is a great idea in the manuals, but as we have noted, its application is where it kind of falls apart.

This is not to say that manuals are useless. Quite the opposite. They reveal the ideal. They show the shape of the civic person we are all supposed to become once we close the book, pass the exam, and enter a traffic circle with six exits, two motorcycles, a delivery van, and someone behind us expressing an opinion about our driving through the horn.

California Dreaming

After thinking about Italian drivers in relation to European drivers, we started to wonder about the United States. But the United States is not one driving system. Requirements and handbooks vary by state, even if the broad ideas are often similar. So, for a concrete example, we looked at California: not the largest state by area, since that honor goes decisively to Alaska, but the most populous state in the country, with more than 39 million people. Here's the California Driver Handbook.

California, being California, does have a section on “Green Driving,” with advice on smooth acceleration, steady speeds, tire pressure, vehicle maintenance, extra weight, and zero-emission vehicles. The environment is there, but mostly through the American vocabulary of efficiency, emissions, and technology.

The horn appears elsewhere, under safety. Use it to avoid collisions or warn others of hazards. Do not honk because someone is slow, because someone made a mistake, or because you are angry. The handbook even reminds drivers that the horn sounds much louder outside the vehicle, which is both obvious and apparently necessary to say.

What's interesting and laudable is that the Italian manual gathers these behaviors under a wider moral weather system: consumption, exhaust, maintenance, noise. The poorly maintained muffler, the unnecessary acceleration, the horn used as punctuation, the rattling load in the back: all are small failures of shared space.

The California handbook says: be safe, be efficient, don’t be a jerk. Gratuitous musical reference: "All the leaves are brown. And the horns are quiet..." sort of thing.

The Italian book says: you are part of an acoustic environment. Please behave accordingly. Gratuitous musical reference: "Prisencolinensinainciusol" sort of thing.

Exhaust as Personal Statement

The Italian driver's license manual also warns against modifying the vehicle, especially the muffler. This is where the theory becomes disconnected from reality, because some vehicles seem to treat the muffler not as a device for reducing noise, but as an instrument of self-expression.

The manual, being a manual, does not say any of this. It simply says the muffler should be approved, functioning, and not tampered with. It does not dwell on some drivers' desire to be heard before being seen.

After going through hundreds of quiz questions, I'm surprised how many questions come down to "is it okay to modify your muffler?". These muffler questions along with the noise questions are easy for me. Too bad the exam wasn't all of these types of questions.

There is something real hiding inside of rules, and that is that noise is rarely only mechanical. It is social, be it a horn or muffler. Noise says: I am here, I am impatient, I am powerful, I am careless, I am festive, I am young, I am late, I am delivering something, I am above maintenance schedules. But who could write rules and create exam questions for these meanings?

We could not find a neat statistic for how many Italians actually modify their mufflers. Perhaps this is just as well, because the phenomenon is easier to hear than to count. What we can say is that the issue is real enough to be written into the Codice della Strada. Article 155 says that drivers must avoid troublesome noise caused by how they drive, how the load is arranged, or other acts connected with circulation. It also says the silencing device, when required, must be kept efficient and must not be altered. So, the manual is not just being fussy. It is turning a legal principle into quiz form: the muffler is not a lifestyle accessory, even if some drivers seem to disagree.

Of course, aftermarket exhaust replacement is not automatically illegal. If it is approved for that vehicle and used as approved, it may be fine. The trouble begins when the exhaust becomes less “replacement part” and more “announcement system.” Somewhere between homologation and self-expression, the manual raises its hand and says: no.

Studying for the Exam, Clutching My Pearls

One of the strange pleasures of studying for the patente as an adult is that the material says more to you than to a teenager. You have years of observing driver behavior, and you are quicker to say, "wait a minute—that's not what I have observed!"

The book says:

• Not to accelerate unnecessarily. The, a car accelerates unnecessarily.
• The horn is for immediate danger. Someone honks because a pedestrian has the audacity to use a crosswalk.
• Avoid rattling loads. A truck passes with something loose and metallic performing percussion in the back. At 6am.

So the city becomes a listening exam, and I try not to turn it into a moral judgement on what I'm hearing. Studying the rules creates a new sensitivity where I hear the street not only as background and blatant violation, but as a series of tiny decisions being made long before we landed in Italy or set up shop on Via Pignolo.

Maximum Moderation, Minimum Compliance

The driver's manual describes a quieter, more considerate world. A world where drivers maintain their vehicles, use the horn only when needed, avoid pointless acceleration, secure their loads, and remember that other people also have ears.

We are not always living in that world.

But there is something charming about the attempt. The manual names the problem. It gives us the polite version of civic life. It says: here is how not to add unnecessary noise to the world.

And that may be enough for a chapter in a driving book. Not enough to silence a modified scooter. Not enough to stop the celebratory honk, the impatient honk, the “I am behind you and therefore must communicate” honk. But enough to make you hear them differently and maybe even appreciate them.

I'll take that as a start. That's lesson one.

Once noise gets labeled as inquinamento acustico, we need to consider it as part of the shared air, like exhaust, dust, heat, and all the other things we contribute without quite meaning to.

The road is not only visual. It is not only signs, lanes, lights, and right-of-way. It is also sound. A public space has a soundtrack, and every driver is adding something to it. This is lesson two.

The Italian manual asks, with charming optimism, that we add less. Con la massima moderazione, of course.

Altered Street Signs

Studying for the Italian patente has made me hyper-aware of street signage. I start seeing rules everywhere painted on the road, hanging on poles, implied in the way people drive (or don’t). One rule that stuck with me, somewhere between right-of-way diagrams and trick questions about parking, and that was: you are not supposed to alter street signs!

Fair enough. Traffic signs are, after all, meant to be clear, consistent, and unambiguous. A shared visual language that keeps things moving and, ideally, prevents chaos.

And then we went for a walk in the old town of Cuneo and found on a few side streets were signs where someone had creatively ignored that rule. The signs in question were senso vietato (do not enter), direzione obbligatoria (mandatory direction), direzione consentita (allowed turn), divieto di sosta (no parking), and senso unico frontale (one way).

   

Left: Senso vietato and direzione obbligatoria.

Center left: Senso vietato.

Center right: Direzione consentita.

Right: Senso unico frontale.

Example of the alterations: A standard divieto di accesso (no entry) sign becomes a pillory holding a person bound by their hands and head. Another no entry sign featured a suited figure, head obscured by the white bar, giving off a kind of anonymous, noir presence. One no entry sign showed a bent figure carrying the bar like a burden. And yet another had a figure painting out of the sign itself, as if frustration had turned literal.

These weren’t acts of vandalism in the usual sense. They felt more like small interventions where someone looked at an impersonal, authoritative symbol and decided to make it more human.

Which brings us back to language.

In a recent post, we talked about how Italian often prefers the impersonal: È vietato, si prega di, divieto di…. The impersonal comes across as facts, not commands. “No entry” becomes “Entry is forbidden.” No finger-pointing, just a statement of reality.

These altered signs flip that dynamic, just a bit. They reintroduce a subject. Suddenly there is someone there ducking under, carrying, resisting, nibbling at the rule. The impersonal becomes personal again.

There’s something disarming about seeing a rigid, standardized system loosened just enough to allow a bit of personality through. Not enough to confuse the meaning—you still know you can’t go that way—but enough to create a small pause and smile.

Of course, the patente book would not approve. Somewhere in its pages, this is clearly filed under non si fa. And yet, walking those streets, it was hard not to feel that something was gained in the breaking of the rule.

  

Senso vietato and Divieto di sosta signs in Cuneo.

Two Phones South of Milan

The New Responsibilities ~ Free Flow  ~ Two Phones South of Milan ~ 

The Black Box Problem ~ Optimization Addiction ~ The Navigator's Seat

 

On road trips, my role has always been navigator.

Traditionally this meant entering the destination, maybe checking traffic once or twice, and then spending long stretches staring out the window commenting occasionally on abandoned buildings and puzzling out Italian road signs.

Not anymore.

On a recent drive between Bergamo and Cuneo, while holding an iPhone showing one route and an Android phone showing another, I realized my navigation job has changed.

The old-me navigator dealt in directions. The modern-me navigator arbitrates between information systems. 

Driving around the south and east of Milan on the A58.

The New Responsibilities

The change announced itself gradually over the course of a weekend trip. Each new layer of technology brought with it another tiny responsibility, another tab to keep open, another system to monitor “just in case”.

The first big shift came from renting an electric car for the first time. We rented through SIXT and suddenly charging became part of the trip planning itself. Not difficult exactly, but present in a way gasoline rarely is anymore.

As navigator, I found myself checking range estimates, locating charging stations, and calculating whether we had enough battery to comfortably make it through the next stretch.

Gas stations have become mentally invisible to us over decades of driving. Electric cars bring infrastructure awareness back into consciousness. You start noticing distances differently. Elevation changes matter. Speeds matter. A casual detour suddenly might have consequences.

In some ways it made travel feel more tangible again. But it also gives the navigator homework.

Free Flow

Then there was the autostrada A33 between Asti and Cuneo.

On this stretch of autostrada, traditional toll booths have been replaced by a “free flow” system. You drive through without stopping while cameras record your license plate. Convenient in theory. Invisible infrastructure at work.

Except now the navigator has another task: remembering to go online later and pay.

And not immediately either, because the license plate often takes a day or more to appear in the system.

So now the navigator keeps a mental ledger of:

• If we paid and if not setting a reminder for tomorrow.
• Remembering the time we used the road.
• Keeping the rental car license plate on hand to identify the car in the system.
• Remembering what app to use to pay.
• Figuring out if we should just go ahead and create (yet another) account or just pay as an anonymous user.

Now road trips acquired administrative tasks and follow-up.

Two Phones South of Milan

The moment that crystallized all this came on our return drive from Cuneo to Bergamo.

We were south of Milan traveling east on the A50 and had two options: continue north toward Milan on the A1, or swing south on the A1 to catch the A58 — the Tangenziale Est Esterna di Milano (TEEM) — a wider loop that is longer in distance but often faster in practice because it avoids Milan traffic.

Google Maps insisted the A58 was closed. 

Not congested. Closed.

Every time we selected the route, Google tried to reroute us away from it. We were still a few kilometers away from the decision point but me-the-navigator felt pressure to make a good decision. Trust Google Maps?

Apple Maps showed the A58 as perfectly normal. The road signs on the autostrada also suggested no issues. And traffic reports sounded fine. (We ignored Google Maps and went on A58 and it was just fine.)

And it was at that point I realized I was no longer navigating. I was conducting a small transportation fact-checking operation real time. I had an iPhone in one hand with Google Maps open, an Android phone in the other checking the same route, and meanwhile I was consulting the official A58 website.

The navigator’s role now includes determining which machine/service/system is lying least.

The Black Box Problem

Part of the navigator's unease is that modern navigation systems are black boxes.

We know they ingest traffic patterns, road reports, historical data, closures, accidents, speed estimates, weather, and probably the emotional state of nearby commuters. Then they produce a route with an aura of mathematical certainty.

But the systems are always changing and a route suggestion that worked one way six months ago likely behaves differently now. Small interface changes might alter behavior. New code is rolled out silently behind the scenes. Priorities shift, for example, for calculating routes for fuel efficiency. We assume determinism because maps look authoritative, but the logic underneath is fluid.

And unlike paper maps, these systems don’t simply describe the world. They actively shape our decisions in real time. If we had followed Google Map's advice and not taken the A58, we would have ended up in a lot more traffic and an hour more of driving. How many people made that decision? Did Google Map's error in this case (and I think it's safe to call it that) cause more traffic?

Today navigation is about dealing with a competing layering of realities:

• the car’s navigation system
• the phone’s navigation system
• traffic websites
• road authority websites
• our own common sense
• and finally, the actual road in front of us

Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they do not.

Optimization Addiction

Of course, there is an easy response to all this: pick a route and stop worrying.

And honestly, if you surrender to that approach, modern navigation is wonderful. Voice guidance, live traffic, estimated arrival times, and charging locations. It’s objectively easier than unfolding giant paper maps across your knees somewhere near Piacenza.

But modern systems tempt us with optimization like:

• Save seven minutes.
• Avoid congestion.
• Faster route available.
• Charge now instead of later.
• Traffic ahead.
• Incident reported.
• Recalculating.

Every route now feels like a live market constantly updating itself.

Humans are not particularly good at ignoring optimization opportunities once they are presented. Especially not when the difference between choices is quantified in glowing blue lines and precise minute counts.

So the navigator stays engaged. Watching. Comparing. Verifying.

Not because the systems are bad, but because they are dynamic.

The Navigator’s Seat

There is also something social happening.

While the driver concentrates on the road, the navigator increasingly manages the surrounding digital ecosystem:

• replying to messages,
• confirming arrival times,
• checking traffic,
• looking up charging stations,
• paying tolls,
• cross-referencing maps,
• interpreting alerts.

Sometimes as navigator, I'm also answering the driver's text messages while trying to sound enough like the driver that the receiver doesn't notice.

The navigator used to help you get somewhere. Now the navigator helps decide which version of reality to trust. 

I made a mistake – Ho sbagliato o Mi sono sbagliato

How to say I made a mistake in Italian? It's one of those cases where Italian looks deceptively simple but the meaning shifts dramatically. Here are your options to say you were wrong: 

• Option 1: "Ho sbagliato" 

• Option 2: "Mi sono sbagliato" 

• Option 3: "Io sono sbagliato" 

Which would you choose? 

A criceto holding a sign for the easiest way to say "I'm wrong".

Option 1: "Ho sbagliato" 

This is the cleanest, most neutral, most widely used way to say "I made a mistake." 

• Literally: "I have erred." 
• Idiomatic meaning: I messed up / I was wrong / I made a mistake. 
• It's direct, non‑reflexive, and works in almost every context. 
• It doesn’t carry the slightly apologetic or self‑correcting nuance of mi sono sbagliato. 

Examples: 

Ho sbagliato il calcolo. → "I got the calculation wrong."
Ho sbagliato a parlare. → "I shouldn’t have said that." 
Ho sbagliato strada. → "I took the wrong road." 

Option 2: "Mi sono sbagliato" 

This is another way to say "I made a mistake" or "I was wrong". 

• It’s reflexive: I got myself wrong → I made an error. 
• Slightly apologetic and admits a mistake in your judgment or assumption.
• It refers to a specific action, not your identity. 

Examples: 

Mi sono sbagliato di numero. → "I dialed the wrong number." 
Mi sono sbagliato a prendere la strada. → "I took the wrong road." 

Option 3: "Io sono sbagliato" 

This means "I am wrong as a person", in the sense of flawed, defective, mistaken in my very nature. It's a statement about identity, not about making a mistake. 

• It sounds existential, heavy, almost self‑blaming. 

• Italians rarely use it unless they truly mean something psychological or moral. 

Example (uncommon, dramatic): 

Io sono sbagliato per te. → "I’m not right for you / I’m the wrong person for you." 

Rule

The guidelines to keep in mind are:

• Use "ho sbagliato" when you want to be neutral and factual. Use for any error (action, choice, behavior). The mistake is the action. 

• Use "mi sono sbagliato" for mistakes where you want to be slightly apologetic, self-correcting. Use when you thought something wrong (misremembered, misjudged). The mistake is in your judgment or assumption. 

• Avoid "io sono sbagliato" unless you’re writing a poem or having an existential crisis. 

Examples to feel the difference between the two more common forms: 

• If you dial the wrong number:
• Ho sbagliato numero (most common) 
• Mi sono sbagliato di numero (also fine, more "oops, my bad") 

• If you say the wrong date: 
• Mi sono sbagliato, era il 12, non il 13. (You misremembered.) 

• If you choose the wrong wine: 
• Ho sbagliato vino. (You selected poorly.) 

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. One highlight of the trip 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 sauntered 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 herbs are parboiled briefly 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

Notes on Entropy from a Courtyard in Italy

We think about entropy more than is probably healthy. Not the physics kind, exactly, but the everyday version: the slow drift of things away from order when no one is paying attention. We were away from our apartment for a couple of weeks last year. When we came back, nothing dramatic happened. No disasters. No broken windows. And yet everything felt slightly off.

For example:

• Used napkins and cups appear in the planter near our entrance. The Nandina domestica, already struggling in the planter, had not been asked.
• Cigarette butts sprouted in a planter within reach of a café table. The Aspidistra elatior growing in the planter-ashtray was slightly indignant at the situation.
• The large vases in the courtyard. We bought them. We planted them. While we were gone, they disappeared. We found them and quietly put them back where they belonged.
• The patch of garden near the trash area has acquired objects we cannot trace: balls, shards of glass, random objects. We don’t know their origin story.
• Advertising mail piles up in the shared mailbox, in the slot everyone agrees does not belong to anyone in particular. We cleaned it out like always.

Are we the only people working against entropy? Or are we just the only people who notice it? Or care enough to reset things? Or believe—perhaps incorrectly—that these small interventions matter?

Rather than asking whether some cultures generate more entropy than others, it may be more useful to ask how responsibility for dealing with it is distributed.

We keep coming back to two patterns.

In the first, responsibility is assigned explicitly. Someone is in charge. Someone is paid. Someone will handle it. Until then, things wait.

In many Italian contexts, responsibility is clearly defined and narrowly bounded. If it’s your role, you do it thoroughly. If it’s not, intervening can feel inappropriate, even slightly rude. The logic isn’t indifference so much as it isn’t my role. From that perspective, entropy accumulates in the gaps between roles.

In the second pattern, responsibility is shared. No one is explicitly assigned, but everyone feels a low-level obligation to intervene.

Japan is often cited as the clearest example. Responsibility there is diffuse but internalized. The question isn’t “Is this my job?” so much as “How will this reflect on the group?” Public trash cans can be scarce, yet streets are clean. People clean schools, offices, and even public spaces they don’t own. Disorder is pushed back early, in countless small gestures, before it has time to settle.

Living here in Italy, we operate as if responsibility is ambient as in Japan, in a place where responsibility is largely explicit. That mismatch may explain why we notice entropy so acutely. It’s just a hypothesis, but one we keep returning to.

We also catch ourselves wondering if geography plays a role. The farther north you go, the more things seem labeled, assigned, and maintained. But even as we think it, we don’t quite trust the idea.

Ivy and Language

We’ve written before about ivy in Italy, how it climbs and wraps itself around trees without anyone seeming particularly bothered. To our eyes, it looks like a problem waiting to be addressed. To others, it reads as part of the scenery, even something cozy. Like a scarf.

We’ve started to wonder if entropy works the same way. What we read as neglect, others read as life happening. Not because they don’t see it, but because intervening isn’t always the default response. Stepping in can feel like overstepping your role.

In that sense, entropy isn’t always decay. Sometimes it’s restraint. A decision, conscious or not, to let things be.

Also, as we’ve written about how the Italian language makes good use of the impersonal: si fa, si vede, è così. Things get done. Things get seen. Things simply are. No one in particular needs to step forward. Entropy fits comfortably into that kind of grammar.

Against Entropy, Briefly

We still pick up the glass. We still reset the plants. We still clear the mailbox. Not because we think we are winning, but because these small acts feel like a way of staying in conversation with a place, our home, our community.

Entropy always wins in the long run. But in the short run, noticing still feels like a choice. And for now, it’s one we keep making.

Street Sign Language Lesson LVI

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In this round of Street Sign Language Lesson, we deal with a fascist-era sign spotted during a bathroom break, try to understand if a place is open or closed in Bergamo, and why people think drinking collagen will help their skin.

I Sigg. CLIENTI SONO PREGATI DI ORINARE ALL’INTERNO DELLA CASA ONDE EVITARE DI LORDARE LA PUBBLICA, ANNO 1929 (VIII) EF.
“Gentlemen customers are kindly requested to urinate inside the establishment to avoid dirtying the public space outside.”


Really, we just stopped for a pee-break and thought this looked like an interesting sign. We were at Snack Bar Giusy (near Passo Pordio) skiing the Sellaronda. We didn’t expect to get a history lesson out of it. Perfect for Travelmarx.

This sign is a little time capsule of Italian public‑hygiene regulation, social class performance, and Fascist‑era dating conventions, all wrapped in a politely stern voice.

The sign addresses “I Sigg. Clienti” — “Gentlemen customers” — and asks them to urinate inside the establishment rather than in the street, “to avoid dirtying the public road.” Then it ends with “Anno 1929 (VII° E.F.)”, meaning year 1929, year 7 of the Fascist Era (Era Fascista), which was the official dating system used by Mussolini’s regime. What!? Didn't know that.

Urban sanitation in the early 20th century was uneven. Bars, cafés, and osterie often had to remind patrons not to relieve themselves outside. This sign is part of that everyday infrastructure of discipline.

The “VII° E.F.” signals the sign (or at least the original) was produced after 1926, when the regime mandated Fascist dating. It reflects the regime’s obsession with order, cleanliness, and public discipline. Even mundane signage became part of the ideological landscape.

What’s curious here is this that this sign is likely some kind of reproduction. Why was it put here? What are the owners trying to signal? Humor or something else?



PREZZI IN ALLESTIMENTO
“Prices under set-up”

Shops use this kind of signage when the display is ready but the price tags aren’t finalized or haven’t been placed yet. It’s a kind of moment in retail when the shelf is complete, but the economic meaning hasn’t been attached.

The sign is nearby some prostate medicine, so I was fixated on the sign being relevant to only that product. However, the pharmacist explained that the sign really applies to all prices marked (non drug-items) as a way to sort of cover the fact that not all prices are show for all products and/or the prices aren’t updated. Kind of a cover-your-ass thing.

MOSTRA IN DISALLESTIMENTO, ESPOZIONE IN RIALLESTIMENTO
“Exhibition being taken down, display being re-installed".

I guess you can say this gallery space is not fully closed nor fully open, but in transition. It’s a polite way of saying don’t expect too much of us at the moment. This reminds us of the famous “open” until we’re not state of places. Often we see a sign that says a place is open, the hours are right, but the place is closed.




Diamoci del tu
“Let’s be informal (between us)”

Dare del tu - “to address somebody informally” and Dare del lei - “to address somebody formally”. This ad for the new (and very much improved) Bernareggi museum is very simple and effective. Come on in and let’s get to know each other



SAN BENEDETTO – COLLAGENE + ZINCO + ACIDO IALURONICO
“San Benedetto – collagen, zinc, hyaluronic acid"

A ritualized wellness product: a small, daily gesture that makes people feel they’re caring for their skin from the inside. More specious products selling the narrative of inside-outside beauty. Collagen consumed is broken down into amino acids. It doesn’t stay as intact collagen molecules that magically patch your skin.

Zinc could be useful if your diet is low in this mineral, but this is rare, and you’d being buying a supplement instead of overpriced water.

Now to hyaluronic acid, this typical skincare additive is useful for holding water in the skin. However, ingesting it doesn’t act like a topical moisturizer.

At the end of the San Benedetto commercials, the model/actor turns to the camera and says “San Benedetto, my secret”. The only secret is how they get away with marketing this stuff.


 

Carote al selenio; Selenella – La carota
“Selenium carrots”

Here we go again. This time, it’s selenium in carrots.

Selenium is a trace mineral essential for human health. In general, in a country like Italy, selenium deficiency isn’t an issue in normal diets at least you wouldn’t think it is until you start reading packaging.

The selenium in these carrots comes from soil management, not genetic modification. Producers add selenium to the soil or select naturally selenium‑rich areas. The most visible brand is Selenella, a consortium of Italian growers that promotes potatoes, onions, and carrots as fonte di selenio (source of selenium). This marketing niche has been around since 2011.

The taste? We haven’t done a blind taste test but we’ve not heard that selenium-enriched carrots taste any different. We are so done with “functional foods”.

CEROTTI PER HERPES LABIALE
"Cold sore patches"

Sounds so much nicer in English. If this poor girl shown on the packaging had just had drank more Skin Care water and eaten more selenium-enriched carrots, then she would not have ended up in this situation.

GATTO CICCIONE E COCCOLOSO DI 7 ANNI CERCA CASA. CRESCIUTO IN APPARTAMENTO. PIGRO E MANSUETO.
“Fat, cuddly 7-year-old cat looking for a home. Raised in an apartment. Lazy and meek.”


What drew our eye to this ad was the word mansueto, as we never had seen it used before.

What a mammone! Even the cats in Italy jeez. I got news for the current owners; it’s all an act.