I would also love to know

by the look i geuss it just colored concrete

I have a similar look in my front yard and we poured the concrete in-place and finished it off by sanding it smooth. When it gets wet you will need to be cautious as like on any other concrete surface. .

Thanks for your explanation. My question was put forth about a year and a half ago :-) and we went ahead and poured a concrete walkway in front of our house, which is the commonly accepted way with farm houses in our region of Italy. It is about 30 meters long, every 3 meters there is a thin piece of metal to avoid cracking. We finished it with a funny gizmo (photo attached) which is also the traditional way. Our builder (old man kneeling down in the photo, son with gizmo) was very happy that we chose this method and eager to teach his son (at first not letting anyone but himself to use the gizmo) who was shying away from it, telling us to brush it, or make twirly designs and other strange looks. It is not slippery during rain unless one has very smooth surfaced flat shoes. We are very happy with the results.

I'm sorry that we did not get an answer to you sooner. I'm glad that you came up with a successful solution. I just spent three weeks in Italy and had a wonderful time. Where is your farmghouse located?

oh, no apologies needed, I did not mean to sound as if I was complaining. The restoration work took us 16 months; along the way we grabbed all the help we could from on-line sources :-) finally in June 2011 we moved in.

We are living in Piedmont region (North West Italy). Where were you visiting?