Nobody can avoid stepping on a risseu in a walk around Genoa. As well as the two most famous ones, in Palazzo Reale and Campo Pisano, the typical mosaics decorate numerous gardens, roads, and churchyards in the city.
They are an ancient art tradition that expresses the deep connection with the sea, and is inspired by the flower decorations that covered the roads during the Corpus Christi processions. Their manufacture is simple at first sight, but instead requires a good amount of patience and a myriad of raw material: after a preliminary drawing, there is the laying of the pebbles, accurately chosen in the quarries or beaches for their shape or their white, black, and sometimes red color. Millions of stories at your feet, literally.
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