Ciao Genoa!
"medievil sprawl "
Centro Storico - downtown Genoa (2 mins walk from our appartment)
taken 30/04/07
Labels: bella_italia, italia
posted by macca at 6:08 PM
Thursday, May 17, 2007
"medievil sprawl "
Centro Storico - downtown Genoa (2 mins walk from our appartment)
taken 30/04/07
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- Name: macca
- Location: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
I'm just a bloke with a blog, with occassional stories to tell
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8 Comments:
nice Chris, though "sprawl" is the last word I'd use to describe Genoa. Henry James described it pretty accurately:
"Genoa is the tightest topographic tangle in the world, which even a second visit helps you little to straighten out. In the wonderful crooked, twisting, climbing, soaring, burrowing Genoese alleys the traveller is really up to his neck in the old Italian sketchability."
How are your climbing legs coming along?
5/18/2007 02:10:00 PM
you're right. Sprawl is incorrect, though Genoa seems to have made a fine art of ignoring geography, and spreading itself well beyond the hills that surround it. I should know because I work about an hour out of Genoa.
Henry James' description certainly captures the old town perfectly. It really is quite extraordinary to walk around. It is also extraordinarily difficult to get a decent map of the place to help navigate the alleys.
My climbing legs are developing nicely! The benefit (or perhaps cost) of living so close to this view.
5/18/2007 08:00:00 PM
Clearly, Chris, you need a GPS unit to help you navigate... :)
5/22/2007 11:54:00 AM
... a GPS unit would be nice ... but so would the language!
5/23/2007 08:00:00 PM
The tourist info has an alright map, at least for the central city. But following it is a pain because of the curves. I found it easier to just orientate myself to the harbour.
In the center, you are generally, you are either you are running parallel to it, or towards it. Also remember that any street named after a church is either going towards it, or away from it. So if you can remember their names all things are easy.
On the 17-19thC streets (the big boulevards) you are generally going from piazza to piazza. They are more like a grid anyway.
In the hills, pick the right spur. The roads circle the spur, the staircases go up them. Mind you I can never seem to find the exact staircases that take me to/from the youth hostel.
Incidentally Chris, suspecting as much I checked, and I have an almost identical photo to that one.
Also this one, which loks in the opposite direction, but is a cool shot.
Has there been enough wind to blow the smog away yet? You'll see the Mediterranean Alpes when it does ('its very nice).
5/24/2007 12:44:00 PM
Oh, and yes, Genoa does amazing things with geography. It goes for miles along the coast. Though I am not sure you can claim to be in Genoa after an hour. It is only a two hour trip to Milan!
Mind you, northern Italy is pretty much just one big urban area, with a few mountains serving as green wedges.
5/24/2007 12:47:00 PM
Russ .. that first photo is spooky:
5 metres apart in space,
5 years apart in time
very nice.
Good to know someone at home has a visual sense of where we live.
RE: smog - I am not sure it's so much smog, or just the salty mist of the Medeterranian - it comes and goes.
I am actually working in a town situated in the northern hills of Genoa, so get some pretty nice views of the surrounding mountains - when things clear up, which is not all that often - usually after it rains (I'll start bringing the camera to work)
5/24/2007 08:47:00 PM
Not quite that long - only 2 and a bit years. That was on my second time there.
Re: smog. It is probably easier to show you, and you can tell me how typical it is. When I mentioned to the hostel clerk how clear the view was she said it was like that after a windy night. But having only been there a week I don't know how often it blows. It does blow though: the hostel was swaying like a boat on rough seas.
At any rate, two shots of the hills out the back. The first on a clear day after rain, with your typically dirty grey/brown north Italian smog that never seems to let up. The second on a clear day after wind. You can see the Alpes from this one, taken from the steps that run up along next to the funicular.
5/30/2007 01:50:00 AM
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