History

Genoa’s old town packs its trades into vicoli barely wide enough for two people to pass. Into one of them, Vico dei Caprettari, the barber Giacalone fitted his shop in 1882 — ten square metres near the port arcades. For forty years it was an ordinary bottega.

The change came in 1922. Giacalone’s son Italo wanted an interior to match the confidence of the age and turned to the Vetreria Bottaro, a Genoese glassworks, for the work. They lined the small room in cathedral glass, set coloured and textured panes into the walls and overhead, and hung mirrors to pass the light around. The result belongs to the late Liberty moment as it shaded toward Art Déco: ornament built from glass and reflection rather than carving.

When the last Giacalone heirs died, the shop risked disappearing. In 1992 the Fondo Ambiente Italiano acquired it through public subscription, with funds from institutions and private donors alike. The same Vetreria Bottaro that had glazed the room in 1922 carried out the restoration. The barber’s reopened, and a Genoese barber still works the chairs — one of the oldest trading interiors in the city, kept in use rather than embalmed.