When I first worked here in the '90s, Treviso was Venice's well-kept secret—a place where locals lived undisturbed while tourists raced straight to San Marco's canals. Decades later, the transformation startled me: groups now cluster around Palazzo dei Trecento, and a cheerful tourist trenino chugs past Canale dei Buranelli. Yet through all the changes, Treviso's soul remains intact. Old men still debate soccer in the piazzas, children still whisper in BRaT Library's corners, and Gigia—well, she's become the city's most discerning regular. One moment she holds court in San Francesco's cloister; the next, she inspects the medieval walls like a tiny quality-control officer.

What comforts me as tour groups pass is how life pulses to the same authentic rhythm. The trenino may circle Piazza Rinaldi now, but Treviso's heart beats strongest where tradition meets daily life: in the morning market banter near Porta San Tomaso, in the quiet glow of Santa Lucia's candles—and in the magical moments that still happen spontaneously here. If one is lucky, as Gigia was, they might even bump into a famous movie star in a narrow street and score an impromptu photoshoot (though she, being a cat, pretended nonchalance about the whole affair).

Some things, mercifully, even tourism can't touch—not the golden light on the canals, not the taste of the season's first white asparagus, and certainly not a certain feline's royal progress through her city.