Bakeca
Bakeca is a free classified ads site launched in Turin in the spring of 2005 on the initiative of Turin-based entrepreneur Paolo Geymonat, who drew inspiration from the American model of Craigslist [1] [2]. The name, with a «k» in place of «ch», was chosen as a tribute to the informal texting language of the time, and the domain was registered within twenty-four hours [2]. The company describes it as an initiative by a group of friends developed by Geymonat [3].
The project launched with an investment of about 30,000 euros and became known through an American-style yellow school bus, identical to the one in The Simpsons, which toured Italian university towns for three years, amid fines, impoundments and repairs [1] [2]. The service is organized by city: torino.bakeca.it, the edition for its hometown, collects listings for housing, jobs, services, vehicles, training, buying and selling, and electronics, as well as an «In città» (In the city) section, and is run by Bakeca S.r.l. [4].
For its twentieth anniversary in 2025 the company reported 50 employees, over five million visits a month, three million active users and roughly a million active listings, of which 350,000 for jobs and 250,000 for real estate, presenting itself as an independent Italian company [1] [2]. In the Torino Top 100 ranking for September 2026, the site appears among the 10,000 most visited sites in Italy according to Google's Chrome UX Report.
