Free Walking Tour, the authentic way to experience the city

Alberto Pioppi, sociologist, shares his personal approach to experiencing the city and offers some insights on how to “read” urban spaces.

Ever since that day when our Urban Sociology professor told us: “Dear students, I’ll be away for two weeks. In the meantime, here’s your assignment: go to the places you frequent in your daily life, but observe them differently than usual. Use the curious gaze of a flâneur and write down in your notebook everything that stands out to you—be it a group of people, a note scribbled on a wall, a shop, or a street name.” — that’s when I realized this would become my way of understanding the world.

So, what is a flâneur? It’s a figure created by Baudelaire to describe someone who strolls through the city, seemingly aimless, yet emotionally engaged with the urban landscape. In my work as a sociologist and educator, observation and listening always play a central role. Observing individual and collective behavior, listening to people’s stories and the stories of places, interpreting the meaning of things—both objectively and subjectively. When I ask my students in tourism promotion courses to describe their own neighborhood, after an initial moment of confusion, they begin to “see” everything differently—those everyday situations they had never really noticed before suddenly gain new meaning. And when they interview local residents—often their own neighbors—they unexpectedly enter a world rich with history and personal narratives. For the first time, they begin to read their own living environment in a new light.

This is increasingly how tourists behave as well. Even those who, for various reasons, spend just a few days in a city like Reggio Emilia often feel the need to get under its skin. Alongside the many beautiful historical sites, there is a growing desire to understand the everyday history, to live experiences and emotions as if they weren’t tourists. That is the core philosophy of the Free Walking Tour—something I immediately connected with. It’s what I’ve always done, albeit in different contexts: schools, professional training courses, and the urban geo-explorations organized by the association I’m part of. It’s clear how hungry people are for micro-stories—the small details that allow them to walk away with a visceral understanding of a place.

Last Saturday, at the end of the tour, a young woman from Turin told me: “Thank you for making us feel like locals for two hours.”
Another woman was surprised to learn the unique history of the square where she often spends time with friends, sipping a glass of wine. These two simple anecdotes capture the entire meaning of this form of participatory tourism: feeling part of something you don’t normally live, and seeing a familiar place in a new light.

One thing’s for sure: the next time I visit a city, whether in Italy or abroad, I’ll be joining a Free Walking Tour.