Bolzano, Via Firenze 30. Two shop windows, newspaper clippings stuck on to cover, mask, encrypt. But through cracks and drafts something can be glimpsed. Jerseys, water bottles. Frames, wheels. Bicycles.

It was the kingdom of Cicli G. Turci. G. for Gino, born in 1912, from Carpi: the father, the first of the Turcis. And G. for Giovanni (but Gianni to his friends), born in 1943, from Carpi: the son, the second of the Turcis. In Carpi, not just a bike workshop between the two world wars, where bicycles were cleaned and stored, but also repaired and sold, and since you couldn't make a living from bikes alone, they also sold fireworks, bird cages, clocks... In Bolzano, just a bike workshop, after the Second World War, in 1946. And here not only repairs and sales, but also creations, because calling them manufacturing seems too little. Bikes for bakers, bikes for apprentices, city bikes, bikes – tricycles – for women with a basket between the two rear wheels. From the Seventies onwards – it was Giovanni who convinced Gino, who was a talented frame builder – also branded bikes. Giovanni chose the best: Cinelli, Colnago and Masi. In the racing world, Cicli G. Turci had ventured in the Sixties thanks to Gino's craftsmanship: it was 1962 when the Bolzano sprinter Bruno Brasolin turned professional (the first professional cyclist from South Tyrol) in the San Pellegrino team directed by Gino Bartali, his bike was a Cicli G. Turci painted orange with the San Pellegrino logo. The world of professionals was not his environment: Brasolin raced for half a season, then gave up.

Giovanni inherited from Gino his passion and genius, but not his character: Gino was spectacular, he sang, played (the violin), danced, Giovanni is still a man of few words and long silences, he called his customers all, or almost all, "Signor Ciclista" (Mr. Cyclist). In 2009 Corey Sar Fox made a magnificent reportage, text and photos, for Pez Cycling News: instead of asking questions, he preferred to wait for answers, and Giovanni Turci's answers came as stories, monologues, reflections. In the published photos, strictly in a blue worker's suit, Giovanni appears serious, concentrated, unperturbed. As if there were only him and the bicycle, or rather, the bicycle and him, or perhaps just the bicycle, or perhaps that bicycle and nothing else. So much so that when Ernesto Colnago launched carbon bicycles, Giovanni Turci stepped back: he didn't know that material, so he didn't understand it, and therefore he didn't work with it. And he dedicated himself to his bicycles, the ones he knew, understood and worked with, those in steel, those for the city, those historic, those from another era.

Until two years ago, Giovanni Turci lowered the shutter and goodbye bikes. For Bolzano, a civic loss. "Describing Cicli Turci as 'a bicycle shop'" – Corey Sar Fox writes in the introduction to the reportage – "is like defining the Ventoux 'a climb'". Better to say "a Mecca of cycling" and "a heritage of history and bikes (and dust)".

But life is a relay race. And on the other side of the street, at Via Napoli 11, for some time now there's a new shop. Just one shop window, just one room. So much so that the bikes – a constant flow of sick and healed ones, crowded like an emergency room – are parked against the window and occupy the sidewalk. The mechanic's name is Diallo, he comes from Guinea, he's been in Bolzano for 12 years, he speaks Italian better than an Italian, he's quick with his hands and movements, he pedals on foot between a pair of brakes to replace and a pair of cleats to extract from shoes, a squeaking mudguard and a derailleur that won't shift, a new rack and an old tire. While he works, Diallo listens to Guinean music from his phone. It seemed to me that he has already inherited something from Gino and something from Giovanni, and from both he has adopted virtually unlimited working hours. Bicycles work miracles.