Handpicked experience · Milan
Milan, Italy
Genoa once housed visiting kings by drawing lots among its private palaces, and the fishing village at the end of this day has four hundred residents and several thousand daily visitors.
A two-hour guided walk through Genoa's historic centre
The return boat between Santa Margherita Ligure and Portofino
Time of your own around Portofino's harbour and its streets
Travel by air-conditioned coach
Genoa was one of the great maritime republics and it shows in a way that catches people out: there is no royal palace, no single grand set piece, just an enormous medieval labyrinth and a street of private houses built to impress foreign heads of state. Portofino, ninety minutes down the coast, is the opposite problem — very small and very visited.
The best thing about this city and almost nobody arrives knowing it. Genoa was a republic with no monarch and therefore no palace to lodge visiting royalty in. Its solution, from the sixteenth century, was a public register of the finest private houses in the city. When an ambassador or a king arrived, lots were drawn, and whichever family came up had to accommodate them at its own expense and to a standard matching the guest's rank. Families competed to build grandly enough to be listed. Forty-odd survive on the UNESCO list, and many can be walked past in an hour.
Behind that street lies a medieval core covering more ground than any other in Europe, and it is genuinely a maze: alleys a metre and a half wide, six-storey buildings on both sides, and daylight reaching the paving for perhaps an hour around noon. Two hours with a guide is enough to see it and nowhere near enough to learn it. Some lanes towards the port are rough after dark, though that does not apply by day.
A specific instruction that will make you look local. Here it is a breakfast food, sold by weight from bakeries from about seven in the morning, and the traditional way to eat it is dipped into a cappuccino. It sounds wrong and it is not. The oil-dimpled, salt-flecked version is the Genoese one; the tall bready thing sold elsewhere in Italy is a different food with the same name.
Worth knowing. The motorway viaduct into the city collapsed in August 2018, killing forty-three people, and its replacement opened in 2020 to a design by an architect born in this city, with a deck shaped like a ship's hull and lighting that follows the sun. If you came in by the western approach you drove over it. It is a memorial as much as a road, and the city treats it that way.
The reason the itinerary is shaped as it is. The road to Portofino is a narrow corniche with almost no parking at the end of it, and coaches cannot get in at all. Approaching from the water is not an indulgence but the only practical way to arrive, and it happens to be the better view: the village only makes visual sense from the sea, which is how it was built to be seen.
Said plainly. Fewer than four hundred people live in Portofino and several thousand can arrive on a summer day. The village has responded with rules, including stretches near the harbour where stopping to photograph carries a penalty, brought in after standing crowds blocked a road barely wide enough for a car. Keep walking, take the photograph from the harbour wall, and go up the hill where almost nobody follows.
Be clear-eyed about a twelve-hour day. Milan to the coast and back accounts for roughly four hours, the transfer along the shore and the crossing another hour or so. What remains is around two hours in the city and a similar stretch at the harbour. It is enough for both places at a walking pace and not enough to go inside anything substantial in either.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Because the republic had no monarch and no palace to lodge visiting royalty. From the sixteenth century lots were drawn among the finest private houses, and the family selected had to accommodate the guest at its own expense to a standard matching their rank.
It covers more ground than any other medieval centre in Europe. The alleys run about a metre and a half wide between six-storey buildings, so daylight reaches the paving for roughly an hour around midday.
Focaccia, at breakfast, sold by weight from bakeries from around seven in the morning and traditionally dipped into a cappuccino. The dimpled, oily, salt-flecked version is the Genoese one.
Because the road is a narrow corniche with almost no parking and coaches cannot get in at all. Arriving from the water is the only practical approach, and it is also the way the village was built to be seen.
Fewer than four hundred people live there and several thousand can arrive on a summer day. The village has introduced designated stretches near the harbour where stopping to photograph carries a penalty, after crowds blocked a road barely wide enough for a car.
It replaced a viaduct that came down in August 2018 with forty-three deaths. The city gave the commission to one of its own sons, and the result reads as much like a memorial as a road.
Roughly four hours between Milan and the coast, plus about an hour for the shore transfer and the crossing. That leaves around two hours in the city and a similar stretch at the harbour.