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I Love Touring Italy - Western Liguria
I love touring Italy so much that I am doing a series on both the well known and the rarely visited tourist attractions of Italy's twenty regions. This article explores sights in the western part of the Liguria region of northern Italy including some history, local food, and Liguria wine. Please join me on this tour.
If you are in the mood for a European tourist destination, you should consider the Liguria region of northern Italy, commonly known as the Italian Riviera. This thin strip of land lies on the Ligurian Sea, not far from Monaco and the French Riviera. While Liguria is hardly undiscovered, its crowds are quite a bit smaller than those next door. You will find many little towns or villages and one international port city almost smack dab in the center of the coast. This article explores Liguria west of Genoa, or as the locals call it, Riviera di Ponente (The Riviera of the Setting Sun.) Be sure to read our other articles in this series: eastern Liguria, Genoa, and Cinque Terre, five little seaside villages that just might steal your heart.
We start our tour just west of Genoa at the seaside town of Pegli. We continue southwest down the coast to the Albisola Marina, Imperia, Bussana Vecchia, San Remo, Bordighera, and end our tour at the Giardini Botanici Hanbury just west of the French Border.
As Liguria’s capital Genoa grew it almost swallowed little Pegli. You can walk around and see vestiges of its past. Its two main attractions are Villa Doria and Villa Durazzo Pallavicini. The Sixteenth Century Villa Doria is now home to the Genoa Naval and Maritime Museum honoring the world’s most famous sailor, Christopher Columbus. The Nineteenth Century Villa Durazzo Pallavicini houses the Museo Civico di Archeologica Ligure (Ligurian Civic Archeological Museum) with a beautiful park, lakes, grottoes, and a medieval-style castle. Albisola Marina, population fifty-five hundred, is famous for ceramics. I am told that experts can identify Albisolan ceramics from their shape, designs, and colors. In any case walk down the Lungomare delgi Artisti (Artists Seafront) near the beach and you’ll find beautiful souvenirs of Liguria. Stop by the luxurious Eighteenth Century Villa Durazzo-Faraggiana to see. Don’t forget to look down and admire its floor tiles. It’s close to the Baroque Parish Church of Nostra Signora della Concordia (Our Lady of Harmony).
Imperia, population forty thousand, is really two cities in one. Oneglia is an oil refining and pharmaceuticals center. So why would you want to visit there? Its Museo dell’Olivo (Olive Oil Museum) is devoted to the finest of cooking and salad oil, spanning nations and centuries. The location is quite fitting; at one point little Oneglia controlled the oil commerce for all Europe. Imperia’s other city, Porto Maurizio, has a medieval city center and some palaces. The fairly modern Cathedral, completed in 1832, is Liguria’s largest church. The city is proud of its Naval Museum of Western Ligura known for its collection of shipbuilding tools.
Bussana Vecchia is an artist’s colony that emerged from a ghost town. In 1887 an earthquake destroyed a village in the Ligurian hills east of San Remo (see below). The survivors built huts near the entrance to the village but abandoned them after seven years. For more than six decades this entire area was abandoned. In the early 1960s an Italian artist founded the Colonia Internazionale degli Artisti (International Artist Colony) for dancers, musicians, painters, sculptors, and writers. As true artists they respected the medieval characteristics of the buildings, used bricks and stones reclaimed from the rubble, and left the original facades. Don’t miss it.
San Remo, population under sixty thousand, is the largest resort in western Liguria. Tucked in between the Mediterranean Sea and the Maritime Alps it enjoys an excellent climate. During the off season San Remo is probably the only animated site in western Liguria. It is an international flower center, dispatching an estimated twenty thousands of tons of flowers (who measures flowers by the ton?) per year. But like the old grey mare, San Remo ain’t what it used to be. I’m told that royalty no longer hangs its hat in these parts. Is that a reason not to visit?
You should see the Russian Orthodox Church of San Basilio built less than a century ago by expatriate Russians. If you like to gamble hit the tables at the Art Nouveau San Remo Casino. Who knows what celebrity you may see there? The casino theater hosts the annual San Remo Music Festival and has done so since 1951. The initial festival attracted only three singers. I’m not naming names, but one famous (at least to Italians) contestant commited suicide after realizing that his song was eliminated from the competition.
La Pigna, the historic center of San Remo dates back about a thousand years and still maintains a lot of its unique character. Pigna means pine cone; the local streets curl around the little hill like the scales of a pine cone. Start at the Fourteenth Century Gothic stone arch Porta di Santo Stefano (Saint Stefano’s Gate) and continue your tour with by visiting numerous churches, villas, palaces, and the like. Maybe royalty and their hangers on just don’t know what they are missing.
Bordighera, population just over ten thousand, has long been a popular winter resort, especially for the English who at one time outnumbered the local residents. This town is famous for its flowers and palms, proudly used in Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica on Palm Sunday. Bordighera was the first city in Europe to grow date palms, well before global warming. According to legend the local date palms grew from Egyptian pits planted at the beginning of the Fifth Century. The Lungomare Argentina (Argentina Promenade) has an excellent view of the French Riviera and other churches. The Seventeenth Century parish church of Santa Maria Maddalena, has fine bell tower and holds the relics of Sant’Ampelio, the patron saint of the town. He’s the one said to have first planted those Egyptian date pits. Our last stop is the Giardini Botanici Hanbury (Hanbury Botanical Gardens) located on a small steep peninsula that slopes down to the Mediterranean Sea. At about 44 acres (18 hectares) is one of the largest in Italy, but presently only about half the property is cultivated. You can find specimens from five continents, including palms, but may only see the villa from the outside.
What about food? In spite of such a long seacoast, Ligurian cooking isn’t nearly as seafood intensive as one might think. The Ligurian coast does not offer as rich a variety of seafood as does Italy’s eastern Adriatic coast or its Mediterranean coast further south. Instead of crying about it Ligurian cooks developed their own specialties including a vegetable pie that was a favorite of sailors, surely a change from that same old fish.
Let’s suggest a sample menu, one of many. For starters try Pansoti con Salsa di Noci (Ravioli with Walnut Sauce). Then try Polpe e Patate (Stewed Octopus with Potatoes.) For dessert indulge yourself with Castagnaccio (Chestnut and Pine Nut Tart.) Be sure to increase your dining pleasure by including local wines with your meal.
We’ll conclude with a quick look at Liguria wine. Tiny Liguria doesn’t have a lot of room for wine grapes. It ranks 19th among the 20 Italian regions for the acreage devoted to wine grapes and for total annual wine production. About 34% of its wine is red or rose, leaving 66% white. The region produces eight DOC wines. DOC stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, translated as Denomination of Controlled Origin, presumably a high-quality wine. Approximately 14% of Ligurian wine carries the DOC designation.
There are three DOC wines in the Riviera di Ponente region. The Riviera Ligure di Ponente DOC may be produced almost anywhere in western Liguria. While this wine is always dry it may be red or white and comes from a variety of local grapes. The dry or sweet Pornassio/Ormeasco di Pomassio DOC is produced in a small area north of Imperia from the local red Ormeasco grape, called Dolchetto elsewhere. This grape is said to resemble Gamay, so if you like Beaujolais there’s a good chance that you will like this wine. The Rossese di Dolceacqua/Dolceacqua is produced from a local red grape in a small zone at the western tip of Liguria. It is Liguria’s best-known wine. Liguria exports very little wine to North America so you may have to go there to taste the wines. To tell you the truth, there are many better reasons for visiting this lovely area.