Parco delle Mura – The City Walls Trail
Few European cities can offer a two-hour hike through forested hillside that ends with a view of both the sea and the Alps, all without leaving the city boundary. The Parco delle Mura follows Genoa's extraordinary 17th-century defensive walls — 12 kilometres of fortifications snaking across the Apennine ridge above the city — through a protected park of oak woodland, wildflowers and abandoned fort
The Walk
The most rewarding section runs from Forte Begato in the west to Forte Sperone — the highest and most dramatic of the forts, sitting at 489 metres with a 360-degree panorama that takes in the entire Gulf of Genoa, the Ligurian Apennines, and on crystal-clear winter days, the distant white peaks of the Alps. The walk between the two forts takes roughly 90 minutes at a gentle pace.
The walls themselves are a feat of 17th-century military engineering, stretching 12 km and incorporating a series of star-shaped fortresses. They were built between 1626 and 1650 to defend against the Duke of Savoy and were never actually breached — a fact the Genoese mention with evident satisfaction.
Wildlife and Practical Access
The park is home to roe deer, wild boar, peregrine falcons and a remarkable diversity of Mediterranean scrub flora — rockrose, wild rosemary and tree heather line the path in spring. April and May, when the hillside is in flower and the air is cool, is the finest time to walk.
Access is easiest from the Righi funicular, which departs from Largo della Zecca in the centro storico and climbs to the Righi hilltop neighbourhood in about 10 minutes, dropping you within a 20-minute walk of Forte Sperone. The funicular runs regularly and costs the standard AMT city transport fare.
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