In recent months I’ve been to the Luigi Ferraris stadium a few times to watch Genoa play. It sits in Marassi, wedged between the Bisagno riverbed, a main road, a prison and a listed fourteenth-century villa, with four red-brick towers planted at its corners like chess rooks. Those towers are not decoration. They went up between 1987 and 1989, when Vittorio Gregotti rebuilt the ground for the World Cup, and they are the most honest thing in the city about what that summer was. Genoa got a stadium that people still admire. Most of Italy got something else.
There is an article by Lauren Leek called How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants. I read it eight months after moving to Genoa and could not put it down. The premise is precise and a little uncomfortable: the way Google Maps ranks restaurants has almost nothing to do with food quality. It is about algorithmic prominence, a composite of review count, review velocity, web presence, and interaction signals. Venues that accumulate more reviews rank higher. Higher rank brings more visitors. More visitors bring more reviews. The loop does not care whether the food is good.
If you asked me a few months ago what the pinnacle of the culinary world was, I would have answered without hesitation: Brazil and Spain. Being a Brazilian raised on Spanish soil, my palate was forged between the soul and abundance of Brazilian food and the impeccable technique and respect for produce that define Spain’s kitchens. I thought I had already seen and tasted the best.
But then life brought me to Italy. More specifically to Genoa, between the Ligurian Sea and the mountains, where the scent of fresh basil and focaccia coming out of the oven seems to permeate the city walls. And the burning question remains: is Italian gastronomy really everything people say it is?
I need to tell you about a football club that died and refused to stay dead.
Not metaphorically. Literally. On May 4th, 1949, a Fiat G.212 aircraft carrying the entire Torino FC squad crashed into the Basilica of Superga, just outside Turin. Thirty-one people died. The team that had won five consecutive Serie A titles, the backbone of the Italian national team, the greatest club side Europe had ever seen, was obliterated in an instant.
“Bon sabbo à tutti! 🏴 !” (Happy Saturday, everyone!)
I recently moved to Italy, specifically to Liguria, where Genoa sits like a scarred sentinel watching over the Mediterranean. This afternoon, December 20th, I stood in the heart of the city to witness the Confeugo. It is a ceremony of fire, prophecy, and linguistic ghosts, and it forced me to look past the postcard version of Italy to something much more abrasive and real.
