Tag: Genoa old town

Baltimora Gardens and Genoa’s Carignano Bridge.
Walking through Genoa’s historic centre, below Sarzano Square, I reached Baltimora Gardens and noticed how this small green space opens an unexpected view towards the Carignano Bridge. If you are wondering what to see in Genoa’s old town, this is the kind of corner I enjoy finding while simply walking around, away from the more obvious landmarks.
The gardens create a small break in the dense urban landscape. Genoa’s historic centre can feel very enclosed, with narrow streets, tall buildings and the constant succession of small passages and unexpected turns. Suddenly finding an open space changes the perspective, even when the space itself is quite modest.
What caught my attention was the contrast between the gardens and the bridge. The greenery occupies a relatively small part of the scene, while the Carignano Bridge rises behind it with a much greater sense of scale. I liked the way the two elements seemed to belong to completely different worlds but were brought together naturally by the viewpoint.
I took this photograph myself while wandering through the area. I was not looking for a particular monument at that moment. I simply noticed the composition and stopped to take the picture. These spontaneous discoveries are often the reason I enjoy photographing Genoa: the city continually offers views that are easy to miss if you are walking too quickly.
Genoa, Liguria, Italy, is a city where the shape of the landscape has always influenced the way buildings, streets and infrastructure fit together. Hills and valleys are part of everyday life here, and bridges become important elements of the urban landscape. The Carignano Bridge is particularly striking from this kind of partial viewpoint because it does not appear completely isolated from its surroundings.
Instead, the buildings and vegetation frame it. Only part of the structure becomes visible, and for me that makes the photograph more interesting than a straightforward view of the entire bridge. It becomes something discovered rather than something simply presented.
The area around Baltimora Gardens has also changed significantly over the years. This part of Genoa was once connected with the old Madre di Dio neighbourhood, an area that disappeared during the major urban transformations of the twentieth century. That history gives the present-day landscape another layer, even though nothing in this particular photograph immediately explains what was here before.
One small curiosity is the name Baltimora. The gardens are also commonly associated with the nickname “Plastic Gardens”, a name that has remained linked to this urban space. It is one of those details about Genoa that becomes noticeable only when you start paying attention to the names and stories behind its less famous corners.
For me, the most interesting aspect remains the relationship between the garden and the bridge. The photograph is not really about one or the other. It is about the way they meet within the same frame, together with the surrounding buildings. This is one of the things I like most about urban photography: sometimes the subject is not a single object, but the relationship between several elements.
The old town of Genoa is particularly generous in this respect. Walking through the caruggi, a small opening can reveal a completely different view from the one you had a few seconds earlier. I have experienced the same feeling in other parts of the historic centre, where streets and buildings create unexpected compositions simply because of the way the city was built.
That is also why this photograph connects naturally with other English-language stories I have published about Genoa. In Campopisano Square in Genoa’s old town, for example, I wrote about another small urban space that I discovered while exploring the historic centre. The two photographs are quite different, but they share the same idea: sometimes the most interesting views are found by walking rather than by following a list of famous sights.
If you are visiting Genoa, places like these can become part of the experience without necessarily being the main destination. You might pass through the area on your way somewhere else, notice a small opening between the buildings and suddenly find yourself looking at a completely different part of the city.
That is what happened to me here. I was simply walking, looking around and paying attention to the spaces between the buildings. The gardens gave me a little room to stop, while the bridge provided the strong architectural presence that made me reach for the camera.
I also like the fact that this is not a conventional postcard view of Genoa. There is no attempt to show everything at once. The bridge is partly hidden, the garden occupies only a portion of the scene and the surrounding buildings remain part of the composition. It feels closer to the way I actually experienced the place.
For me, that is an important part of keeping a photographic blog. I do not want every photograph to be a perfect overview of a famous attraction. Sometimes a picture is simply a record of having noticed something while walking through a city I know and continue to discover.
Genoa has plenty of monumental architecture, but its smaller urban spaces are equally capable of stopping me. Baltimora Gardens and this view towards the Carignano Bridge are a good example. The scene is relatively simple, yet the combination of greenery, buildings and infrastructure gives it enough character to make me pause.

Have you ever noticed this view of Baltimora Gardens and the Carignano Bridge while walking through Genoa? 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 the gardens are located: