THE PAVEMENT WAS THEIR CANVAS

I love walking around Genoa. No matter how often I go, there is always something to see and discover. On one such walk I happened to be with my Italian friend Anna, whose knowledge of the history of the city is phenomenal. We were walking on a stone pavement in the city centre, when Anna stopped and started looking for something on the street. She asked:
"Did you know that hundred years ago, all these stone slabs were hand crafted by stone masons who then also decorated and signed them?"
So we are not walking on any old concrete slabs then?
I started looking at the pavement with a newly found curiosity.

Sure enough we found one such signature (pic above), hidden away in of the stones in a pavement leading to an alley. It was quite a revelation to realise that hundred years ago the pavement stones were not manufactured in some nameless factory, which produced thousands such slabs a day, but that every single one was painstakingly patiently made by stone masons who decorated every stone in their own style and treated this as an opportunity to leave their own mark in Genoa. Those stones have lasted to this day - respect!