Genoa hands out its best sights for nothing: Rubens altarpieces in free churches, a hillside cemetery of marble sculpture, and forts on the ridge above the port. Add €2 funiculars and €4 cones of fried anchovies and three days here cost less than one museum day elsewhere.
Genoa's black-and-white striped marble cathedral costs nothing to enter, roughly 08:00–12:00 and 15:00–19:00 daily. An unexploded British naval shell fired in 1941 still stands in the right nave. Only the underground Treasury charges (€6).
Free-entry Baroque church on Piazza Matteotti holding two Rubens altarpieces — the Circumcision and the Miracle of St Ignatius — plus Guido Reni's Assumption. Better canvases than many ticketed Italian galleries, at zero cost.
Monumental cemetery opened in 1851, free to walk daily from 07:30 to 17:00, covering a hillside of marble mourners and Art Nouveau tombs. Bus 34 from Piazza Corvetto drops you at the gate; Giuseppe Mazzini's tomb sits up the wooded slope.
Terrace above the old town, free and open around the clock, with the whole harbour and the Lanterna spread below. The 1909 Art Nouveau Ascensore Castelletto Levante lifts you there for one AMT ticket instead of the stair climb.
Covered market of 1899 built inside a former Augustinian cloister off Via XX Settembre, busiest Monday to Saturday mornings. Focaccia, olives and Ligurian herbs sell by weight; the upstairs MOG food hall plates meals from about €7.
Standing-room fry shop under the Sottoripa arcades, frying since 1908. Paper cones of anchovies, squid rings, panissa chickpea sticks and stuffed vegetables run €3–6, eaten leaning on the counter with the port a few metres away.
Sciamadde are Genoa's wood-fired savoury-pie shops, and this one on Via Ravecca has baked since 1860. A wedge of torta pasqualina, farinata or rice torta costs €2.50–4, cut straight from the copper pan onto greaseproof paper.
Working-class trattoria on Via dei Giustiniani with a wood oven at the back, open since the 1890s. Farinata, stuffed vegetables and minestrone alla genovese land at €5–9 a plate, house white by the quarter litre for around €3.
Funicular running since 1897, climbing 279 metres from Largo della Zecca to Righi in seven stops on one ordinary AMT ticket valid 100 minutes. From the upper station the Parco Urbano delle Mura trails set off along the 17th-century walls.
Star-shaped fortress crowning the New Walls at roughly 500 metres, free to circle outside and free inside when it opens for summer events. The ridge path from Righi takes about 45 minutes, harbour on one flank, Polcevera valley on the other.
Public lift that rolls horizontally 200 metres through a tunnel, then rises 60 metres vertically, all for a single AMT ticket. It surfaces beside Castello d'Albertis, whose world-cultures museum is free on the first Sunday of each month.
Former fishing hamlet at the far end of Corso Italia, reached on city bus 31 for a standard ticket. Pebble cove, ochre houses stacked over the water, free swimming and free sunsets; a scoop of gelato adds about €3.