LucadeaLuca is the creator of this site. He travels the world for work and loves taking photographs and sharing them with all his visitors.

The archway of Vico Sotto le Murette in Genoa.
While walking through the historic center of Genoa, Liguria, Italy, I often find that turning into a smaller street reveals a detail worth photographing. This time, I stopped at the archway of Vico Sotto le Murette, a passage below Campidoglio square that leads toward the nearby Campo Pisano square.
Getting lost among Genoa’s narrow caruggi is one of the things I enjoy most when walking through the old town. You can wander for a couple of hours following a completely improvised route and never seem to pass the same place twice. The streets change direction so often that even familiar areas can reveal a different view with just one turn.
This photograph came from one of those walks without a fixed itinerary. I wanted to capture the archway with my camera because I like the way it frames the narrow street continuing beyond it. It is not one of Genoa’s famous monuments, and it may not be the first place someone would look for when visiting the city, but these are exactly the small details that give the historic center much of its character.
If you are wondering what to see in Genoa’s old town, the famous palaces, churches, harbor and better-known streets will naturally come to mind. Yet part of the appeal lies in the network of smaller lanes, arches, stairways and passages connecting different parts of the city in ways that are not always immediately obvious.
Vico Sotto le Murette is in the Sarzano area, one of the oldest parts of Genoa. From here, the route can lead toward Campo Pisano, a distinctive square known for its black-and-white cobbled pavement and colorful surrounding buildings.
There is also a small historical curiosity behind the name Campo Pisano. Tradition connects it with Pisan prisoners captured by the Genoese after the Battle of Meloria in 1284, who were reportedly brought and held in this area. The name therefore recalls one of the episodes in the long medieval rivalry between Genoa and Pisa.
Beyond the history, what interests me most in this photograph is the relationship between the archway and the lane. The arch creates a kind of threshold, a point where the street changes character and naturally invites you to continue. These architectural details appear repeatedly throughout Genoa’s caruggi and can easily go unnoticed if you move through the historic center too quickly.
The Sarzano area is especially rewarding for this kind of wandering. Within a few minutes, relatively open spaces give way to narrow lanes, while monumental buildings can suddenly be replaced by houses standing directly along the street. The layout makes long, orderly views difficult, but it also means that new perspectives are constantly appearing.
When I photograph these corners of Genoa, I am not simply trying to document a location. I am interested in capturing a particular moment during the walk: the instant when an archway, staircase or small opening between buildings suddenly becomes the subject of the photograph.
This image naturally connects with other photographs I have published on the blog about Genoa’s historic lanes. In some posts I have focused on plaques and inscriptions, while in others I have simply recorded views discovered while walking. They are different photographs, but they belong to the same way of looking at Genoa, paying attention to details away from the city’s most familiar perspectives.
That is why I think wandering without a precise destination can be such a good way to photograph the old town. You do not necessarily need to search for a monument. Sometimes it is enough to follow a narrow street and see what appears around the next corner.
The archway of Vico Sotto le Murette is, in itself, a simple subject. But within the dense fabric of the caruggi, it becomes something more: a small threshold between two streets, one of the many passages that make Genoa’s historic center so rewarding to explore with a camera.

Have you ever walked through this archway on the way to Campo Pisano? Add a comment or go to the bottom of the site to read what other visitors have written.

Photo taken with a Canon EOS M100 camera and Canon EF-M 11-22 lens.

Here is where this vaulted archway is located:

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