Ah Genoa

Flying south to Genoa from London takes us over the Alps - spectacular, jagged, icy peaks. As the mountains tumble into the Mediterranean, we are suddenly banking over Genoa. The pilot and this correspondent nervously search for a spot that is level and long enough to land.  Fortunately, and without my help, he finds it, and we land to a plummy British Airways welcome to Genova.

What a city! Beautiful ancient buildings cling to the hillsides surrounding the Porto Antico. The Mediterranean is ablaze, radiating brilliant light onto the pastels of the city, its cupolas and castellations, made homely by washing strung between shuttered windows. Turning into the old city from the port feels like coming inside, so quiet and dim and still compared with the bustle and glare of the port.

The city is a delightful maze of narrow old lanes, winding their way up the hill from the sea. They are cobbled and surrounded by four storey buildings – lanes so narrow that we move into single file to pass or to dodge a flatulent Vespa.

There are countless small shopping streets, selling shoes, clothing, jewellery and antiques interspersed with tiny bars, restaurants, bakeries. Occasionally, the narrow street opens to a piazza, with street-side restaurant. In early November, the weather is mild and locals rule the streets, not tourists. Genoa invites you to poke around, wander, follow your nose.

Turn off the shopping streets and you quickly find quiet residential lanes, or street-girls leaning bored against a wall, or sitting astride a stool at a door.

Walk on a little, foccacia Genovese in hand, and the old town opens up into the world heritage listed palazzo and streetscapes of Via Balbi and Via Garibaldi. These exquisite seventeenth century residences of the wealthy and the royal are breath-taking, with grand street frontages, huge internal colonnaded piazza and gardens. We visited the Palazzo Reale, now a museum with the rooms as they were when the Palazzo hosted Naploeon for a state dinner in 1805.

For our dinner, we crossed from the hotel to a restaurant with room for perhaps twenty. We walked past displays of fresh seafood to be welcomed by a mustachioed waiter, whose English was significantly better than our combined Italian. The seafood antipasto, pesto and veal with porcini went with a dry Italian white for us. The kids found happiness in carbonara, bolognese and chocolate icecream, served on linen tablecloths with flair and charm.

Genova is a reminder that Italians live with their history, in it, on it and around it. Very little is locked up – the place wouldn’t work if it was. This is one of my favorite places.