The 10 best hidden beach towns with a food festival in Liguria
Liguria's coast is a thin shelf of land pressed between the Apennines and the sea, and everything about it is compressed: houses painted ochre and rose, stacked steeply above pebble beaches, shutters closed against the afternoon glare. The water is clear enough that you can see the bottom well past the buoys, and the local councils are audited for it every summer. What gives the coast its rhythm, though, is food tied to a date. Fried fish, olive oil, chickpea farinata, cheese focaccia, apricots and figs, each with a town that stops for a weekend to cook it in quantity, usually in late spring or high summer, usually outdoors on the seafront.
Most people who come here for the coast go to the Cinque Terre, and the reasons are obvious enough: the terraced vineyards, the footpath between the villages, the light on Vernazza's harbour in the evening. It is also small, reachable only by a single train line and a narrow road, and in July it absorbs more visitors in a day than it has residents. Local authorities have spent years managing the crowding with ticketed paths and capacity warnings. The pictures are true. The queues are also true.
The same coast runs west from Genoa towards the French border and east towards the Gulf of Tigullio, and it does not stop being beautiful when the famous stretch ends. There are beaches with clean water certification, gelaterie, medieval centres behind the promenade, and villages that measure their year by one dish. Fewer people go, the trains still stop, and the festivals are attended largely by the people who live there.
Of the 54 communes we have mapped in Liguria, 11 qualify as beach towns with a food festival: each holds the national award for clean bathing water, and each holds a recurring food festival built around one local ingredient. This list is the hidden ones, 10 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Laigueglia, has 1,705 residents.
If you are still choosing, we have also written The best hidden beach towns in Liguria and The 10 best towns with a food festival that have a serious restaurant in Liguria.
Laigueglia
Why visit Laigueglia
Laigueglia sits at six meters on the Riviera di Ponente, sheltered between the two headlands that frame the bay. The name comes from Aquilia, a reference to the Roman eagle standards, and the village grew from a settlement of fishermen who came over from neighboring Andora.
Genoa bought the borough in 1609. Through the seventeenth century the economy ran on shipbuilding and the coral trade, which drew Catalan fishermen to settle in numbers and left behind the Baroque churches that anchor the centro storico today: the parish church with its curved front, and the confraternity oratory with its carved choir and Piola altarpiece.
Behind the beach, the fishermen's grid still reads as caruggi, small squares opening to the sea, houses in pale violet and ochre, the seafront watchtowers standing at the edge where the town once kept watch for raiders by sea. What the coral money built, the town has simply gone on living inside.
What to see in Laigueglia
- Chiesa di San Matteo. The curved façade fronts a Baroque interior where the three altarpieces hang alongside furnishings paid for in the coral years, when the parish stood as the visible return on the fishery's money.
- Oratorio di Santa Maria Maddalena. 1616 oratory of the Confraternita dei Disciplinanti, with a carved wooden choir and an altarpiece by Domenico Piola.
- Centro storico. Fishermen's grid of caruggi behind the beachfront, with houses painted in the pale lilac and ochre traditional to the Ponente coast.
How to get to Laigueglia
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 85 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through June and September through October are the calmer summer-edge months on this coast. The Bandiera Blu beach is open, the sea is warm enough from June onward, and the centro storico is not yet packed. July and August bring crowds, especially from Piedmont and Lombardy, and the litoraneo fills shoulder-to-shoulder. Il Salto Dell'Acciuga falls in October.
Borgio Verezzi
Why visit Borgio Verezzi
Borgio Verezzi is two settlements stitched together in 1933 under a single comune in the province of Savona. Borgio sits on the coast at the mouth of the Bottassano stream.
Verezzi rises 200 meters up the Orera hill above it, four old boroughs of stone houses in the warm-pink local rock: Piazza, Roccaro, Crosa, and Poggio, each a cluster rather than a single center. The beach below has held the Bandiera Blu without interruption since 1989.
The two halves of the town read as coast and height rather than old and new: the lower village handles the shoreline and the flag it has kept for decades, the upper village keeps its stone streets and its square turned toward the sea view. What the pairing adds up to is a comune built from two working parts, a beach town below and a hill village above, joined by administration in 1933 but still legible as separate places.
What to see in Borgio Verezzi
- Grotte di Valdemino. Dated to 1933, the caves run through chambers where small underground lakes sit beneath the karst rock, the route winding through passages carved out over time.
- Piazza Sant'Agostino. Main square of Verezzi, framed by pink-stone houses with a view down to the sea. The village skyline serves as backdrop for the festival's summer stage.
- Chiesa di San Pietro Apostolo. Neoclassical parish church built in 1789 on the foundations of the medieval Burgum Albinganeum castle, with a white façade and two bell towers.
How to get to Borgio Verezzi
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 69 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months on this stretch of the Riviera di Ponente. The beach at Borgio holds Bandiera Blu and the water warms into May. July and August are full: the coast road slows, the spiaggia fills with weekenders from Genova and Torino, and the theater festival runs in Piazza Sant'Agostino from early July to mid-August. Sagra della Lumaca falls in August.
Noli
Why visit Noli
Noli sits at four meters on the Riviera di Ponente, fifty kilometers southwest of Genoa. From 1192 to 1797 it was an independent maritime republic, the fifth alongside Genova, Pisa, Venezia and Amalfi, holding the Capo Noli headland and a stretch of coast under its own flag and protected by alliance with Genoa.
The medieval walls still ring the centro storico, and the survivors of an original eight defensive towers still rise above the rooftops, including the Torre dei Quattro Canti and the Torre Papone. Outside the walls stands the Basilica di San Paragorio, an eleventh-century Romanesque church and one of the most important early medieval buildings in Liguria, with a wooden crucifix from the twelfth century and a bishop's throne carved into a single block of stone.
The Capo Noli cliffs end the bay to the south, with footpaths leading to grottos and a hermitage in the rock. The litoraneo carries the Bandiera Blu.
What to see in Noli
- Basilica di San Paragorio. Eleventh-century Romanesque church outside the walls, with a twelfth-century wooden crucifix and a bishop's throne carved from a single block.
- Torre dei Quattro Canti. Surviving medieval defensive tower inside the walled centro storico, one of eight that originally ringed the maritime republic.
- Torre Papone. Second medieval tower of the original defensive ring, still standing above the rooftops of the centro storico.
How to get to Noli
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 58 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through June and September through October are the right months for Noli. The sea is warm enough from late May, the walls of the centro storico keep the streets shaded, and the coastal path to Capo Noli is walkable without midday heat. July and August fill the beach and the limited parking on the coastal road; the rest of the village stays calmer than the Bandiera Blu litoraneo. La Repubblica del Gusto falls in June.
Camogli
Why visit Camogli
Camogli sits on the west side of the Portofino peninsula, twenty kilometers from Genova on the Golfo Paradiso. The earliest record dates to the tenth century, when it was already a tuna and shrimp fishing port.
By the nineteenth century, the town's fleet of merchant sailing ships ran to several hundred vessels and Camogli was called the city of a thousand white sails. After the naval defeat at Abukir against the British, the camogliesi shipowners reinvested in building merchant sailers under contract to the major European states.
The painted façades of the seafront houses, with their false windows and trompe-l'oeil cornices, served the returning sailors as recognition marks from sea. The Castello della Dragonara, built in the thirteenth century, still guards the harbor.
Every second Sunday of May, the Sagra del Pesce fries thirty thousand portions of fish in a single giant pan on the wharf, in honor of San Fortunato. San Fruttuoso, the eleventh-century abbey reachable by boat or trail, sits in the next cove.
What to see in Camogli
- Castello della Dragonara. Thirteenth-century fortress guarding the harbor, used as municipal seat and now a venue for exhibitions and cultural events.
- Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta. Parish basilica next to the castle on the harbor, baroque interior with marble inlays and seventeenth-century paintings.
- Abbazia di San Fruttuoso. Eleventh-century Benedictine abbey in the next cove, reachable by boat or by the coastal trail across the Portofino peninsula.
How to get to Camogli
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 33 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Camogli
“A steep hill falls into the sea. The houses are crammed on the slope and painted in bright colors because they are old, packed tight, and need help. There is a small port if the cove allows it and a bigger port if the cove is generous. There is a small piazza around a small church, with maybe four restaurants, three bars, and a gelato place. There is no space for a grand square, because there is no space for grand anything in Liguria.”
Read our piece on Camogli →Tigullio Roadtrip | Four Versions of the Same Liguria
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the strongest months for the Camogli seafront, with mild evenings and clean water before the Genova weekend traffic peaks. The Sagra del Pesce on the second Sunday of May is the date that fills the wharf. July and August are warm, often 28 to 30 degrees, and the painted-façade harbor fills with day-trippers off the Genova trains. Sagra Del Pesce falls in May.
Lerici
Why visit Lerici
The Gulf of La Spezia takes its eastern shore here, and English Romantics renamed that shore the Bay of Poets after Byron and Shelley made it their address in the early 19th century. The fortress that defines the harbour was begun by the Pisans in 1152 to control the gulf, captured by the Genoese in 1256, and rebuilt in its present pentagonal form through the 14th and 15th centuries; it now holds a paleontology museum with Jurassic dinosaur tracks recovered from the local sandstone.
Shelley lived at a house in nearby San Terenzo in 1822, he drowned that summer sailing from Livorno, and Byron swam across the bay from Portovenere on his way to visit him. Beyond the historic harbour the commune stretches south past a colourful frazione perched on a rocky promontory above the sea, a member of the Borghi più belli d'Italia network in its own right; a coastal trail links the two through olive terraces and pine woods.
The town beach holds a Bandiera Blu and the harbour fills with sailing dinghies all summer. Upper fortress and lower water, working harbour and outlying fishing hamlet: the whole gulf edge here reads as one address that two poets happened to share, and the parts of the commune as its castle, its beach, and its outpost on the rocks.
What to see in Lerici
- Castello di Lerici. Begun by the Pisans in 1152, captured by Genoa in 1256, rebuilt in its present form in the 14th-15th centuries. The pentagonal walls still hold the harbour under them, and the paleontology museum inside keeps the Jurassic tracks pulled from the local sandstone.
- Bay of Poets / Casa Magni. The Casa Magni at San Terenzo, a Lerici frazione, was Shelley's residence in 1822, the year he drowned in the bay. The house still stands on the shore that gave the Bay of Poets its name.
- Tellaro. Pastel-coloured fishing frazione clinging to a rocky promontory at the southern edge of the bay. Linked to Lerici by the coastal Castelnuovo trail.
How to get to Lerici
Pisa is roughly 61 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Lerici
“We know the steep streets above the castle by heart. We know which restaurant is for the view and which is for the dinner. We know that the gelato in San Terenzo, made at a place called La Rana Golosa, is worth the half-hour walk along the sea to find. We know the underpass that takes you to the small free beach under the castle, the rocks at the back of it, and the bench halfway along the promenade to San Terenzo where, on a good day, the wind off the Gulf has the precise temperature of being alive.”
Read our piece on Lerici →Lerici | An Old Friend on the Gulf of Poets
Our tip
April through October is the open season in the Bay of Poets — warm coastal days, calm seas from late spring, and the sailing fleet active all summer. June and September are the best months: warm sea, longer light, fewer crowds than July-August. The castle is open year-round (paleontology museum included) and Tellaro is best in October-November when the colours go warm. Mytiliade a Lerici falls in September.
Celle Ligure
Why visit Celle Ligure
Celle Ligure sits at sea level on the Riviera di Ponente, ten kilometers west of Savona. The Aleramici marquises gave the lands to a Piedmontese monastery in 1014; the Genovese families took them over within a generation.
Pope Sixtus IV's family came from here. The lower town runs along the lungomare, with Piazza dei Mille at its center, while the centro storico sits behind it as a borgo of narrow caruggi, one of the Borghi più belli d'Italia.
A handful of artisan kilns still work these streets, ceramic shop signs marking the buildings where the trade continues. The parish church stands within this old town, its façade carrying the ceramic Assumption by Lucio Fontana, San Michele defeating the dragon rendered in the same medium the town has fired since the seventeenth century.
The pieces read as one place rather than several: a fishing and beach economy along the shore, a ceramic trade worked into the old quarter behind it, and a native artist's public commission set into the church that anchors both.
What to see in Celle Ligure
- Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo. Inside, a Via Crucis by Caminati hangs alongside ceramic stations by Emanuele Luzzati, a pairing of local ceramic craft with the Fontana work on the façade outside.
- Centro storico. Borgo of narrow caruggi behind the lungomare, with active artisan ceramic workshops and ceramic shop signs on the buildings themselves.
- Spiaggia di Celle Ligure. Sand and gravel beach that forms the basis of the town's summer economy, backed by the lungomare and the old town behind it.
How to get to Celle Ligure
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 40 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months on this stretch of the Ponente. The sea warms enough for swimming by late May. July and August are full: the lungomare slows, the beach establishments fill with weekenders from Torino, and the Aurelia stays clogged from Albisola to Varazze on Friday afternoons. Acciugalonga falls in September.
Recco
Why visit Recco
Recco sits on a small inlet of the Golfo Paradiso between Sori and Camogli, fifteen kilometers from Genova. The town's viaduct made it a strategic Allied target in the second world war; the 1943 bombings killed 127 inhabitants and left the town to be rebuilt through the late 1940s and early 1950s, so the church, the bridge and much of the fabric standing today date from that reconstruction rather than before it.
The focaccia has documented origins in the nineteenth century, well before the war or the IGP designation gave it formal status, and it is made in a small cluster of towns along this stretch of coast, of which Recco is only one, though the one that gives the dish its name. Pro Recco's history runs on a separate track entirely, a club founded in 1913 whose record has nothing to do with the town's postwar rebuilding.
What ties the two together is only the place itself: a small gulf town, destroyed and remade, that carries a nineteenth-century food and a twentieth-century sporting dynasty as its two claims to notice.
What to see in Recco
- Santuario di Nostra Signora del Suffragio. The campanile rebuilt on the site of the main church lost to the bombings is the tallest postwar bell tower in Liguria.
- Golfo Paradiso seafront. Small inlet between Sori and Camogli, with the Bandiera Blu beach and a short lungomare looking south to the Portofino peninsula.
- Ponte di Recco. The rebuilt railway viaduct stands on the site of the structure that drew the wartime bombings, and remains the spine of the modern town.
How to get to Recco
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 25 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the strongest months on the Golfo Paradiso, with mild water and the fewest day-trippers from Genova. The Sagra della Focaccia col Formaggio in the last week of May is the date that fills the seafront. July and August are warm, often 28 to 30 degrees, and the beaches fill on weekends with Genovesi on the train line. Mangialonga Nel Golfo Paradiso falls in April.
Loano
Why visit Loano
Loano lies sixty kilometers southwest of Genova, at the foot of the arc of mountains that shelters it from inland weather. The town was an imperial fief of the Doria family from the thirteenth century, and the family financed the major public buildings still in use today: the palace at the centro's heart, the loggia beside it where civic business was once conducted, and, indirectly, the church that stands nearer the harbor, built for the town's seafarers and still holding their votive offerings of brigantines and barques.
The old centro, with its palace, loggia and church, sits inland of the modern marina and the two kilometers of beach that run east from it. The mountain at Loano's back and the harbor at its front mark the two poles the town has always worked between: the Doria who governed from the hill and the sailors who prayed by the water.
What to see in Loano
- Palazzo Doria. Considered one of the most representative civil Renaissance palaces in Liguria, its rooms now house the town's administrative offices, and the mosaic floor remains open to view on the main level.
- Chiesa di Sant'Agostino. Founded 1582 by Zenobia Del Carretto, rebuilt 1588-98; called the Madonnetta, the seafarers' church, with votive ship models inside.
- Marina di Loano. The Yachting Pages ranking sits alongside a working harbor east of the centro, with the beach running two kilometers of sand and gravel toward it.
How to get to Loano
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 76 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the strongest months on the Loano front, with the marina full of boats and the beach manageable. July and August are warm, often 28 to 31 degrees, and the population doubles with families on long stays from Milano and Torino. November through March is the calmest stretch but the town stays open because 10,700 residents keep daily services running; the Madonnetta opens for the seafarers' mass on 8 December. Sagra di San Pio X e IX Run San Pio falls in August.
Finale Ligure
Why visit Finale Ligure
Finale Ligure spans three boroughs and the slope above them: Finalmarina and Finalpia on the coast, the walled inland borough set back at the junction of the Aquila and Pora streams. The two coastal quarters face the water and carry the beachfront trade; the inland borough, built as the seat of the marquisate under the Del Carretto from the late twelfth century onward, kept the family's fortifications and its street plan intact behind the walls rather than along the shore.
The stronghold above the borgo passed through building, wartime destruction, and rebuilding before the Genoese conquest left it largely dismantled in 1715, and the Spanish fort on the ridge above continued to ring the town after that conquest was complete. The coastal stretch below carries the Bandiera Blu and now serves as the starting point for the karst climbing and mountain-biking circuit that has drawn outdoor sport to Finale since the 1990s.
The arrangement is a working division rather than a coincidence: the fortified marquisate seat set inland and upslope, the modern leisure economy running along the water below it.
The re-enactment here is Viaggio nel Medioevo, usually held in August.
What to see in Finale Ligure
- Castel Gavone. Del Carretto stronghold built by Enrico II in 1181, destroyed in the wars with Genoa, rebuilt in 1451-52 and dismantled by the Genoese in 1715, leaving the diamond-faceted Torre dei Diamanti standing.
- Castel San Giovanni. Seventeenth-century Spanish fort on a higher ridge above Finalborgo, still ringing the walled town.
- Finalborgo. Walled medieval borough at the junction of the Aquila and Pora streams, listed among the Borghi più belli d'Italia.
How to get to Finale Ligure
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 71 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through June and September through October are the easy months: warm sea, dry rock for climbing on the karst above the town, mild evenings in Finalborgo. July and August bring summer beach traffic; the coastal road clogs and Finalmarina fills, while Finalborgo two kilometers inland stays calmer. Winter is mild on this exposure and the climbing and mountain-biking seasons continue through it; many international visitors come specifically between November and March for the limestone routes. Ecosagra Delle Melanzane Ripiene falls in August.
Lavagna
Why visit Lavagna
Lavagna sits at sea level on the eastern Tigullio, thirty-five kilometers southeast of Genova. The slate quarried from the San Giacomo mountains behind the town roofed the Genovese palazzi and lined the schoolrooms of half of Italy, which is why the Italian word for chalkboard is also lavagna.
Around the year 1000 the Counts of Lavagna held this territory, and the family that descended from them, the Fieschi, rose from it to produce two popes. The frazione of San Salvatore sits above the main town, holding the basilica that one of those popes ordered built in bands of white marble and slate.
Down at sea level, the old center folds around the staircase and square where, on 14 August, the town reenacts a thirteenth-century wedding with the Torta dei Fieschi, a giant cake carried out to the crowd. The beach holds Bandiera Blu at the opposite edge of town, near the port.
A town built on a stone that traveled far beyond it, and on a family that did the same.
What to see in Lavagna
- Basilica di Santo Stefano. Parish church rebuilt over a sixth-century foundation, crowning the main square at the top of a wide staircase where the annual cake pageant begins its procession.
- Basilica di San Salvatore dei Fieschi. Thirteenth-century basilica in the frazione of San Salvatore, ordered by Pope Innocent IV in 1244, façade in alternating bands of white marble and local slate.
- Spiaggia di Lavagna. Long Bandiera Blu beach on the Tigullio, with one of the largest tourist ports in northern Italy at the western end.
How to get to Lavagna
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 44 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months on the Tigullio. The beach water warms enough for swimming by late May. The 14 August Torta dei Fieschi is the central event of the summer: period costumes, procession from the Basilica di San Salvatore down to Piazza Marconi, and a giant cake distributed to anyone who matches a paired ticket. La Torta dei Fieschi falls in August.
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