Spianata Castelletto & the public lifts

Genoa's terrain is steep enough that ordinary streets simply don't work for large parts of the upper city, so the city built vertical transport directly into its public transit network instead — a system of funiculars, cog railways and Art Nouveau public lifts that carry passengers on the same ticket used for buses. This isn't a tourist novelty layered on top of the city; it's genuinely how many Genoese commute between the flatter port areas and the residential districts on the hillsides above.

The Castelletto lift, one of the most elegant of these, rises from Piazza Portello to the Spianata Castelletto, a terrace looking straight down over the old town's roofs to the harbour beyond — a view striking enough that the Genoese poet Giorgio Caproni wrote about it directly. For those wanting to go higher still, the Zecca–Righi funicular climbs considerably further up the hillside, reaching the old fortifications along the ridge above the city.