Tomorrow, Thursday 3 September 2026, I go to my local ufficio immigrazione to pick up my permesso di soggiorno. Basically: Italy is going to give me a document that allows me to live here for the next year*. Exactly a year prior on Wednesday 3 September 2025 I had arrived here in Genoa for a two-month stay. I decided to come here at that time, before I had a visa, because I was paying for an apartment and… that apartment is in Italy! It had honestly taken me too long to make that decision even though it’s pretty damn obvious. A few days after I had arrived for that two months, late on Saturday, Lisa sent me a photo of my passport newly returned from the Italian consulate in Miami with my Digital Nomad Visa attached to one of the pages.
* The permesso expires in three months so effectively I need to start the renewal process immediately. Bureaucracy is a harsh mistress.
(obviously after-the-fact)
Government offices are too cruel to appreciate that they are responsible for some of the most important moments in people’s lives. I loved watching, and sympathized with, the polizia who were trying their polite best to keep people in line. I arrived 45 minutes before my appointment and the first call I heard for those waiting was for appointments that should have occurred 15 minutes prior. I’m at least an hour away. Every call for the next groups, emphasized with a clarification that “the-next-group-plus-five-minutes is not the same group!”, brings people, individuals, families, couples, everyone, asking if their SMS message fits the criteria. “It does not.” But there are worse ways to tell those uncertain masses; responses are the standard range from anger to acceptance.
Everyone knows the deal they’ve made so it’s really not that dramatic.
I brought a book (Julia #90, Il fuoco dentro, a re-read) in case I have a long wait in the waiting room, the same one where I was on my initial visit to apply for the permesso. I’m not sure what happened in that hour+ but it felt like nothing and also maybe everything across a range of emotions. You’re stressed because: did I bring what they need? how long will this take? will I understand what they’re asking? the others seem so much less lost than me, did I not hear them call my time-block for some reason? will I understand what they’re asking?
My four rules:
- Interact once a day
- Visit an historic location once a week (or study history)
- Have dinner out once a week
- Visit another Italian city over a weekend once a month
While studying the history of Genoa, I learned that one of its most important eras–1099-1797 CE when it was la Repubblica di Genova–began with its contribution of ships and soldiers to the First Crusade (1096-1099). From their successes during that crusade, Genoa was rewarded with settlements and trade contracts across the Mediterranean. From these, Genoa grew its influence, wealth, and colonies and became one of the four Italian maritime republics (consisting of: Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa, and Venice) that dominated the Mediterranean during those centuries.
A key individual in that first fleet that was sent during the First Crusade was the merchant Guglielmo Embriaco (1040-?) who helped capture Jerusalem and became known as the “liberator of the Holy Sepulchre”. In the early 1100s the Castro family started building a tower in the oldest part of the city, the Castello district. Stone for the tower was taken from the then-abandoned first walls of Genoa (the “Caroligian” walls) which date back to the mid-800s. These were superseded by the “Barbarossa” walls built in the mid 1100s. Primo di Castro was the brother of Guglielmo and fought with him during the First Crusade and that tower is now erroneously known as Embriaci Tower. (Interestingly, in 1196 there was a law that force all city towers to be cut to no higher than 20 meters. Embriaci/Castro was spared and what we have today is still its original 41-meter height.)
The Castello district is built on the area of the first settlement that was to become Genoa. Around 500 BCE, one of the many tribes that lived in that region, the Genuati (IT) tribe, formed a town at the top of Castello hill. Much like Genoa today, it was a commercial and trading hub. It was destroyed around 200 BCE during the 2nd Punic War and subsequently rebuilt under the protection of Rome. Fast-forwarding to 500 CE after the fall of the Roman Empire, those damned German barbarians from the north, the Ostrogoths and Lombards (Ostrogoti e Longobardi) and others, at various points attacked and occupied the now-unprotected region. After those centuries of instability, that maritime trading power would emerge.
La Chiesa di Santa Maria di Castello was built in the late 800s CE. It’s difficult to specify exactly when a church was built because the time between breaking ground and consecration can be many, many centuries. Santa Maria di Castello, however, is one of the oldest and more significant because of its location. Its ground, its hill, can be thought of as the birthplace of Genova. And the fact that it exists next to the tower that celebrates the family who was key in making Genova one of the most powerful states in medieval Europe, fills that neighborhood with a greater importance.
After my interview on Thursday, after I received my admittedly abbreviated permesso di soggiorno, I walk 10 minutes or so from the immigration office a little further west and in the opposite direction of my apartment in order to visit Torre Embriaci and la Chiesa di Santa Maria di Castello.
There are some winding pathways, as with everywhere in centro storico, but I finally found the tower. Afterwards I followed a short path that took me to the church. When I went to Lavagna a couple of weeks ago, one of the churches I went to had a sign that asked you that, after you enter, you should wait several minutes before leaving because it takes some time for your eyes to adjust. During those few minutes I took a photo of the otherwise muted frescos: in the photos they were actually brilliant jewels of light despite what I saw in front of me. Several minutes later the same became true. This lesson was as valuable at Santa Maria di Castello.
I approached the “docent” (I’m pretty sure she was a nun) for both utilitarian reasons in order to speak Italian and with sincere passion for the importance of what I’ve just explained. She graciously offered to show me the rest of the church, the monastery, the gardens. It’s an absolutely beautiful place and the weather was perfect and I recommend people take pictures if they are invited because I took so few. It’s stupid, but it felt intrusive to pause our conversation to take a photo and so I hesitated.