Historic Shops

Romanengo

Pietro Romanengo fu Stefano. We are in Piazza Soziglia, in the heart of the Historic Center of Genoa and if we enter by delicately opening the door, we are catapulted into 1780. Yes, the times of the great Imperial Courts, when the French and Austrians fought over the domination of Europe. The furnishings and the atmosphere are those. Thus begins our visit to one of the most fascinating Historic Shops in Genoa that can be visited.

The story goes that Antonio Maria Romanengo began the business by opening the first drug and colonial shop as they were called at the time, in via della Maddalena in 1780. Then his sons opened a laboratory and a shop in the Piazza Campetto area, starting to produce sugared almonds, candied fruit and French-style chocolates which were very fashionable at the end of the 18th century.

The shop in Piazza Soziglia opened in 1814 and in 1829 Pietro Romanengo registered the company with the Chamber of Commerce as “Pietro Romanengo fu Stefano” which became the brand handed down for seven generations and which has reached us.

Find out more

Tripperia The cottage

Tripperia La Casana, a historic shop, a delicious journey, a journey through time. We are in the heart of the Caruggi of Genoa, where the medieval part of the city shows the best of the largest historic center in Europe, among porticoes, vaults, arcades, wonderful carved portals and seventeenth-century aedicules, right here tripe has been cooked and sold since 1890 when Annetta Cavagnaro decided that the adventure of Tripperia la Casana should begin.

The shop is one of the most characteristic and fascinating in Genoa, it remains in the Cavagnaro family for almost a hundred years, first with the nephew Giovanni, father of Agostino Cavagnaro who will be the last descendant of the family. The Tripperia.

However, La Casana does not stop and in 1984 Gabriella Colombo becomes the owner, who, with her husband Franco, is today the soul of this historic shop where you can breathe in the scents, aromas and atmospheres of other times. A shop where harmony, beauty and simplicity blend together thanks to the architectural elements, furnishings and original tools from the early twentieth century.

Find out more

Swiss Pastry

Talking about Pasticceria Svizzera in Genoa for those with a sweet tooth is actually not difficult, and including it in our gourmet itineraries was almost a natural gesture.

In the city, more or less everyone knows it, and it is one of the many historic shops that Genoa boasts.

The Pasticceria Svizzera, the chronicles tell, was opened by the "Swiss" a certain Vital Gaspero in 1910, as the historic glass sign states precisely, inside the building where, and this is certain, the English poet Lord Byron lived during his stay in the Albaro district of Genoa.

The shop can be defined as one of the last testimonies of the "Swiss pastry shops" that, between 1800 and 1900, brought the style of Central European pastry making from the German canton to Genoa, which was then expertly mixed with the traditions of Genoese confectionery, creating delicious sweets, in some cases unique and still much sought after today.

Find out more

D. Villa 1827 Pastry Shop

Domenico Villa began selling “drugs and colonial goods” in the former stables of Palazzo Lercari Parodi, in Via Garibaldi, in 1827.

The shop then transformed into a resale shop with an attached production laboratory, developing the market of refined pastry making which, until the early 1900s, was the prerogative of the nobles only. It was managed by the Villa family until 1957, then their nephew Enrico Gadola took over and finally it was sold in 1968 to Mario Profumo, son of an artist, trained at the “Horvath”, a Hungarian chocolate and sugar factory in Salita delle Fieschine.

Despite some transformations, the furnishings, consisting of shelves, wooden sideboards with display cases, wooden and glass counters, are original from the first half of the nineteenth century, as are the marble floor and the cross-vaulted ceiling frescoed with floral motifs.

Within these ancient walls are preserved a late nineteenth-century stone mill for crushing cocoa and a refiner from 1936, as well as molds, tools and old photographs.

Find out more

Romeo Viganotti Chocolate Factory

The company was opened in 1866 by the chocolatier Domenico Viganotti who was succeeded by his son Romeo, and then by his daughter Letizia.

Then his maternal uncle Adoro Pietro Pastorino and his son Roberto take over.

Mr. Roberto continued the artisanal activity, respecting the centuries-old family tradition, until 1999 when, "with the desire that the old and honored factory be carried on with honor" he sold it to Alessandro Boccardo, a passionate pastry chef, owner of the family pastry shop "Helvetia" in Campomorone, a scholar of ancient recipes and interpreter of the secrets of the trade.

The shop, in the heart of the old city centre, retains its original floor as well as the counter, shelves and wooden cupboards with glass doors.

Find out more

The Mirrors Café

Caffè degli Specchi has over a century of history. Located in the historic center of Genoa a few steps from the Palazzo Ducale and the Cathedral, it was opened on June 11, 1908 by Remo Caprioglio, son of Giuseppe, at the then number 47 red on Salita Pollaioli; it began as a liquor store, replacing a chicken shop. On November 29, 1919, the business was partially transformed by Nicolò Cerisola di Domenico into the Bar Splendid, while in the meantime the numbers of the premises had changed to 3 and 5.

In the 1920s it became a meeting point for artists, intellectuals and men of letters; the poet Dino Campana met here with his friends Mario Novaro and Camillo Sbarbaro, and the painters Aurelio Craffonara and Federico Maragliano.

The furnishings, mirrors and shiny cream-coloured majolica tiles still bear witness to the taste of that era.

Find out more

Sa' Pesta Trattoria

The name of the restaurant derives from sa pésta which means “crushed salt” and evokes the refining process of the precious ingredient during the monopoly of the Ancient Republic of Genoa, which for centuries was preserved (grosso) in the port warehouses where it was crushed in a mortar and refined (fino) to be sold here to the public.

Later, bread and wine were also placed under a monopoly and put on sale, hence the transformation of the business into a fast and popular type of restaurant.

Thus, at the beginning of the 19th century, one of the most fascinating and “tasty” taverns and trattorias in the city was born, where they cook the thin, golden farinata, which in the 15th century in Latin was called “scripilita” for its typical crackling in the “testo” – the tinned copper pan still in use – vegetable pies prepared according to tradition with prescinsêua – fresh milk curd – and slowly cooked in a wood-fired oven, and other specialities such as stuffed anchovies and vegetable meatloaves.

And at the end of the meal you drink the bitter “Camatti” originally from Recco.

In the 1950s, when the alleys of Genoa were the commercial center of the city, the restaurant was taken over by Francesco Benvenuto and today it is his children Antonella, Paolo and Cinzia who continue the precious tradition of Sa' Pesta.

Find out more

Fish Clothing

The shop was opened in an Imperial palace in the heart of medieval Genoa in 1922 by Lucho and Mario Pescetto, sons of Giuseppe Niccolò who had founded the company “G.&M. Pescetto” in 1899 in via San Lorenzo.

A “haberdashery” according to the “Register of Companies” of the Chamber of Commerce, but in reality a shop that offered luxury, quality silks, fabrics and underwear.

Mario Pescetto moved on to clothing, with prestigious brands, renovating furnishings and shop windows thanks to the project by Fausto Saccorotti, the artist who, starting in the 1920s, dedicated himself to furnishing and designing furniture and environments, linked to the aesthetic canons of the Austrian secession and German rationalism.

Counters, shelves, stools, mirrors, external fixtures are made by the company “Alberto Issel”, which in an invoice dated 29 April 1939 defines them without false modesty as “work of a distinguished artist”. The furnishings, in Art Deco style, are made of teak wood and the drawers are covered in parchment.

Today, the Scurreria shop is run by Mario Pescetto's sons and his granddaughters Alessandra and Francesca, who proudly and tenaciously carry on the family tradition in the search for a sober, classic and elegant modernity in both men's and women's clothing.

Find out more

Mangini Pastry Shop

Opened as “Fossati & Gismondi” in 1876, between the nineteenth-century Via Roma, “the new city boulevard” and Piazza Corvetto, one of the most elegant and spacious in the city, it later became “Gismondi & Mangini” and from 1945 simply “Mangini”.

The place evokes atmospheres of times gone by and is a fixed point for the Genoese of yesterday and today.

Among them Sarah Bernhardt, Gilberto Govi, Eugenio Montale, Camillo Sbarbaro and the beloved President of the Republic Sandro Pertini, when he directed “Il Lavoro”, the famous Genoese daily newspaper.

In 1893 Sissi, Princess Elisabeth of Austria, travelled by carriage along Via Roma and Piazza Corvetto, stopping to buy sweets in the shop of Messrs. Gismondi and Fossati”.

Find out more