Four days of Belluno Alpini on the Ligurian Riviera — from the Trebbia Valley to the carruggi of Chiavari, between Portofino and the National Alpini Reunion in Genoa 2026.

Chronicle of a happy encounter between two Italies that discover each other as sisters.

There is an old saying among the Alpini that the mountain is everywhere. Even where it isn’t. Above all, it follows the Alpino wherever he goes — with his cappello on his head, his black feather standing tall, and that nostalgia for high places that runs through him like an underground spring. So it was that in May 2026 a piece of Belluno relocated to Liguria — more precisely to the Tigullio — taking with it not only suitcases, but a small Dolomite valley tucked inside the chest.

The occasion was the great, long-awaited National Alpini Reunion in Genoa 2026 — the Adunata Nazionale, as Italians call it. The final destination, certainly. But the journey, as so often happens in Alpine affairs, mattered as much as — perhaps more than — the destination. Because in those four days, between the Thursday morning departure from the Salce Alpine Group’s headquarters and the Sunday evening return — soaked in Genoese rain but dry on the inside, as only Alpini know how to be — something happened that deserves to be told even to those who are not Alpini themselves. Something that has to do with the way two opposite landscapes, two distant geographies, two seemingly different cultures can recognise one another, embrace, understand.

From the Prealps to the Trebbia Valley

Their minibus left the Salce Alpine Group’s headquarters at seven o’clock sharp on Thursday morning, with that slightly martial, slightly affectionate punctuality typical of every Alpine gathering. The first stop — utterly ritual — was the good-luck coffee at Bar da Jole: without it, you don’t go anywhere. Then the motorway, and that small gastronomic ceremony that around here accompanies every trip away: a hard-boiled egg, a glass of wine, a few words exchanged among old comrades.

Just past midday came a stop at Agazzano, in the province of Piacenza, at the Albergo Ristorante Cervo — a longstanding favourite of the Salce Alpini, a fixed waypoint ever since the Piacenza Adunata. Emilian cuisine being what it is: pisarei e fasò, tortelli con la coda, cured meats of the territory. And it is precisely here that the journey begins to grow interesting from a geographical point of view: because after Agazzano, rather than descending towards Emilia, the group took the Trebbia Valley road — the one that Ernest Hemingway famously called the most beautiful in the world. A judgement perhaps a touch exaggerated, but not entirely.

The Trebbia Valley is the first point of unexpected contact. To the Belluno Alpini, accustomed to the severe slopes of the Dolomites, the northern Apennine appears as a gentler, rounder version of their own home mountains. Same chestnut woods, same hamlets clinging to the ridges, same forgotten inns. The stone changes — here grey limestone, up there rose-coloured dolomite — but the grammar of the mountain remains the same. One ascends, descends, ascends again. And by the time the coach finally emerges on the Ligurian slope and the sea announces itself like a salty breath, it is already evening.

Chiavari, a home away from home

At Chiavari, a gem of the eastern Tigullio, family friends were waiting for the Group: the marquee was that of the grounds of the local Chiavari bowling club, the cots ready within minutes of arrival, the briny air greeting the newcomers. An Alpino in transit does not need five-star hotels: he needs a patch of solid ground, a friendly bowling club, and someone willing to fill his plate (and his glass…).

Dinner was outdoors, beneath the first stars: fresh broad beans to shell, Ligurian cold cuts, local cheeses, and the red wine of the Spinelli family from Atessa, in the province of Chieti — a bond born years ago and grown the way good Alpine friendships grow: slowly, and over a few good glasses.

Then, late in the evening, the first stroll through Chiavari’s old town: the carruggi (those narrow alleys typical of Liguria), the unexpected squares, the pastel-coloured palazzi, the wrought-iron signs. A pocket-sized Liguria of discovery — intimate, well preserved — where the Belluno men could touch with their own hands a simple truth: Italian beauty is a local invention, made of alleys, stone, light, and people who say hello to strangers at nearly midnight.

Rapallo, Santa Margherita, Portofino, San Fruttuoso, and “that strange hat”

Friday, day two: by train to Rapallo, then boarding at the small harbour for the Gulf of Tigullio cruise — Santa Margherita, Portofino, San Fruttuoso. The day was one of those Liguria offers when it decides to play the gracious host: a clear sky, a sea of an improbable blue, sheer cliffs, maritime pines mirrored in the coves. Portofino appeared in its picture-perfect form; the Abbey of San Fruttuoso with the gathered solemnity of places that have watched centuries pass in silence.

But the most surprising thing throughout the crossing was the sheer number of foreigners asking to photograph the Alpini. Australians, Germans, Japanese, Brazilians: all of them intrigued by that hat with the feather, by that green headpiece they couldn’t quite place but instinctively sensed was something important.

Germans would ask “diese seltsame Mütze”; English-speakers would say “that strange hat”. From this arose a small, natural exercise in popular diplomacy: explaining, in broken English and with much waving of hands, who the Alpini are, where they come from, what they represent. It was, perhaps, one of the most beautiful moments of the whole journey: Italy telling its story to the world through a hat — and the world, for a few minutes, stopping to listen.

The “Ligurian mess” at Santa Margherita — trofie with pesto, focaccia, fried anchovies and small fish from the day’s catch, white wine from the Cinque Terre — brought the morning to a close. In the afternoon, a walk through the old town of Sestri Levante, dressed in flags for the occasion, with the Bay of Silence on one side and the Bay of Fables on the other: names that sound straight out of a fairy-tale book, yet are simply Ligurian place-names.

Saturday in Genoa: a city in celebration

Saturday, at last, Genoa. The train from Chiavari was filled with Alpine hats from the very departure. As soon as they stepped off, there were the friends: Alpini from Zoldo, from Lentiai, from Tambre, and many other Belluno comrades greeted by name across the platform. At Genova Brignole station, a city in celebration opened its arms to its guests: tricolour flags from every balcony, fanfares at every street corner, applause for every feathered hat that passed. Some called out greetings, some offered a drink without even asking who you were, some pulled out a phone for a quick photograph.

Genoa, a city with a reputation for parsimony and reserve, showed in those days the generous face that history has always recognised in it: industrial capital, open-sea city, partisan commune. The streets seemed open-air taverns. Every alleyway was a small theatre. It is the familiar phenomenon of the National Alpini Reunions — those weeks in which an Italian city, whichever one it happens to be, decides to embrace half a million Alpini on the move and to transform itself, for a few days, into the world’s town square.

At the Porto Antico, between the Aquarium and the moored vessels, a Belluno face dear to all also arrived: Roberto Padrin, Mayor of Longarone, always present when there are Alpini. Because the geography of affection, among Alpini, transcends administrative boundaries. In those days, Genoa was a Belluno piazza transplanted to the Tigullio.

A flower for Guido Rossa

Amid the great Saturday celebration, there was a moment of pause that deserves mention even in this travel chronicle.

The Salce Alpine Group chose to stop at the monument dedicated to Guido Rossa, the Italsider steelworker assassinated by the Red Brigades on 24 January 1979. Few know that Guido Rossa was from Belluno — from Cesiomaggiore, to be precise — who emigrated to Genoa as a child, became an Alpine paratrooper, a trade unionist, and a noted Dolomite climber. A man whose death exposed fanaticism for what it was and helped bring the country back to reason.

An Alpino from our own valleys, then, buried in Genoa. It was the moment when the bond between mountain and sea — between Belluno and Genoa — became flesh and marble: two cities united by a history that deserves to be remembered. Under the Ligurian sky, in the midst of the celebration, the Belluno men stood in silence for five minutes. Five minutes for one of their own.

Sunday’s parade, beneath the rain

Sunday arrived with overcast skies, and within a few hours the rain turned lashing. But an Alpine parade does not stop for so little. The assembly point was at Carignano; opening the procession were the young musicians of the Fanfara della Cadore, themselves from Belluno, instruments polished and uniforms in perfect order. Behind them, dozens upon dozens of Groups from the A.N.A. Section of Belluno, each carrying its own banner, its own stories, its own generations on the march. With the newly elected Section president, Umberto Soccal, greeting everyone.

This year, the Salce Group had the honour of carrying one of the three Section banners: the one bearing the inscription “Alpini: a beacon of hope for Italy”. Seven words, a promise that for one hundred and fifty years the Alpini have kept faith with, even at the cost of their lives. And among all this, an institutional representation from the City of Belluno: Lorenza De Kunovich, wearing the tricolour sash, marched as the city’s delegate — a Belluno woman representing Belluno in Genoa, on a day the rain failed to spoil.

What struck the eye along the route was not so much the rain. It was the Genoese crowd standing in the downpour for hours, applauding, waving flags soaked through with the colours of the tricolour. Genoa lived up to its name: a sea-city that knows what it means to face foul weather, and that — when it sees men marching in the rain — does not retreat indoors, but comes out and applauds. It was a parade we will remember not despite the rain, but because of it.

When the mountain meets the sea

What remains, after four such days? The photographs, of course — many, and beautiful.

SEE ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE SALCE ALPINE GROUP AT THE 2026 ADUNATA IN GENOA

Then the gastronomic memories: the focaccia of Rapallo, the trofie with pesto, the fresh broad beans of the welcome dinner, the Abruzzese red wine and the Prosecco from Guia di Valdobbiadene brought along specially by the Group’s “Alpine stars”. The faces encountered: Antonello Solari, with his wife Patrizia (herself from Belluno) and the friends from the Chiavari bowling club, the Deputy Mayor of Rapallo who gifted a bottle of Vermentino, the Santa Giustina native transplanted to Liguria who recognised the cadence of their speech.

But above all, what remains is an idea — simple and perhaps a touch poetic: that the mountain and the sea are not opposites, but complementary. That a Belluno man in Liguria is not a stranger, but a relative come from far away. That the Dolomites and the Tigullio, so seemingly distant, are in truth two chapters of the same book — that book called Italy, made of wildly different landscapes that nonetheless speak to one another, understand one another, welcome one another.

The Salce Alpini returned home soaked through, weary in the bones, but full inside. They unloaded their banners with care, embraced those who had stayed behind in Belluno, recounted every detail in full. The 2026 National Alpini Reunion in Genoa is now officially archived. But the bond woven between the Dolomites and Liguria — between Cesiomaggiore and Genoa, between Salce and Chiavari, between the feathered hat and the colourful carruggi — that, no, that cannot be archived.

It stays there, like a feather on the hat.
Like a wave that never stops.

— Article produced in collaboration with the Salce Alpine Group, a participant in the 2026 National Alpini Reunion in Genoa.