The 6 best olive oil towns within 90 minutes of Genova
Ligurian olive oil is not the peppery Tuscan kind. The taggiasca olive, grown on terraces cut into the slopes above the water and held up by dry stone walls, gives an oil that is pale gold, mild and faintly of almonds, and it is the reason pesto here tastes the way it does. Harvest runs through late autumn into winter, when the nets go down under the trees and the frantoi run late. The towns that live off this are built of slate and painted plaster, with arcaded streets, market halls and shops selling oil by the tin as well as the bottle.
Most people who come to this stretch of coast go to the Cinque Terre, and the reasons are obvious: the terraces drop straight into the sea, the trains are frequent, the villages photograph well from every angle. In summer the paths between them are queued rather than walked, and the restaurants are turning tables. It is a genuinely good landscape, worked hard by the number of people on it.
The same terraces, the same olive, the same slate and stucco carry on well past that short set of villages, north towards Genova and west along the Riviera di Ponente. The towns in this list are all within about ninety minutes of the city, all on or near the railway, and all belong to the national association of olive-oil towns, which is to say the oil is not a souvenir here but a working crop. Fewer people stop in them, and the frantoi are easier to visit for it.
Of the 39 communes we have mapped in within 90 minutes of Genova, 6 qualify as olive oil towns: each belongs to the national association of olive-oil towns. The smallest, Cervo, has 1,086 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best olive oil towns that eat well in Liguria and The best olive oil towns you can reach by train in Liguria.
Cervo
Why visit Cervo
Cervo sits at 66 meters on a hill that drops straight to the Riviera di Ponente, between Imperia and Albenga. The settlement began as a Roman roadhouse on the Via Julia Augusta and grew into a medieval fief of the Marchesi di Clavesana, loyal vassals of the Republic of Genoa.
The sixteenth-century towers and ramparts that ring the upper village were built when Saracen incursions still threatened the coast, and the fortified high point where the marquis line once held power is now given over to a museum of the coral trade that shaped the town below. The lower streets run down toward the church square, where the coral money that built the parish church also paid, centuries later, for the open-air stage where the summer concerts are heard.
The two high points of the village, the castle above and the churchyard below, mark the two economies that built Cervo: a defensive fief guarding the coast, and a fishing community whose earnings from distant waters ended up carved into Baroque stone. What the hill preserves, in effect, is the record of both: a fortified lookout turned museum, and a merchant church turned concert hall.
What to see in Cervo
- Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Known as the Chiesa dei Corallini. Its concave Baroque façade faces the sea and gives the small square in front of it the acoustics that host the festival each summer.
- Castello dei Clavesana. Sits at the top of the village with walls that once looked out for Saracen ships. The Ethnographic Museum of Western Liguria now occupies its rooms, with displays on the coral trade and the fishing life that funded the church below.
- Oratorio di Santa Caterina. Small Romanesque oratory with eighteenth-century frescoes, set into the old defensive walls.
How to get to Cervo
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 89 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the right months for Cervo. The Riviera di Ponente is dry, the centro storico keeps its sea breeze, and the sagrato of San Giovanni hosts concerts from July into early August during the Festival Internazionale di Musica da Camera. Mid-summer is hot at sea level and the village fills with festival-goers; book accommodation well ahead.
Levanto
Why visit Levanto
Levanto sits at sea level on the Ligurian coast, twenty kilometers northwest of La Spezia and just outside the Cinque Terre National Park. The Cinque Terre Express train stops here every half hour on its way to the five villages, but Levanto has the things they do not: a long sand-and-gravel beach with Bandiera Blu status, a flat centro storico, and a surf break that local guides classify as one of the few big-wave spots in Italy.
The Chiesa di Sant'Andrea, built in 1222, fronts the old town with horizontal bands of black and white marble and a large rose window. The thirteenth-century Loggia Comunale, on the same piazza, was awarded a UNESCO peace and culture title in 2007.
Casa Restani, on Via Grillo, is a surviving medieval merchant house with the ground floor where goods from the harbor were stored. Levanto holds Cittaslow, Bandiera Blu, Parco Nazionale, and Città dell'Olio at once.
La Sosta di Ottone III have been named by a guide.
What to see in Levanto
- Chiesa di Sant'Andrea. Parish church built in 1222 in Ligurian Gothic style, with horizontal bands of black and white marble and a large rose window over the main door.
- Castello di Levanto. Thirteenth-century defensive castle on the hillside, still intact but privately owned and closed to the public.
- Loggia Comunale. Thirteenth-century arcaded loggia on the main piazza, awarded a UNESCO title in 2007 as a monument of culture and peace.
How to get to Levanto
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 72 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months. The sea warms enough for swimming by late May. The surf builds in autumn and winter when Atlantic systems push swell into the gulf.
Andora
Why visit Andora
Andora sits on the Val Merula in the Riviera di Ponente, the westernmost commune of the Province of Savona before crossing into Imperia. The original settlement was Borgata Castello, perched on a hill called Paraxu set back from the coast because Saracen raids made the shore unsafe.
The Clavesana counts raised the castle on Paraxu around 1170, and beside it the late-thirteenth-century Romanesque-Gothic church of Saints Giacomo and Filippo, built in Capo Mele stone with a deep central polyphore and a rose window. Together they are considered the most significant medieval ensemble on the western Ligurian coast.
The modern town moved to the Aurelia coast road after the raids stopped. Colla Micheri, the hilltop hamlet bought and restored by Thor Heyerdahl of Kon-Tiki fame in the 1960s, sits above the modern beachfront.
The Spighe Verdi recognition flags the green network running through the commune; the olive grove network covers the Val Merula slopes.
Vignamare have been named by a guide.
What to see in Andora
- Castello dei Clavesana. Ruined castle raised by the Clavesana counts around 1170 on the Paraxu hill, the first nucleus of medieval Andora, in Capo Mele stone.
- Chiesa dei Santi Giacomo e Filippo. Late thirteenth-century Romanesque-Gothic church beside the castle in Borgata Castello, central polyphore and rose window in Capo Mele stone.
- Colla Micheri. Hilltop hamlet of Saracen-era stone houses around the church of San Sebastiano, bought and restored by Thor Heyerdahl in the 1960s.
How to get to Andora
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 83 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the strongest months on Andora's coast. The olive groves come into harvest from late October into November. July and August fill the Aurelia beachfront and the Riviera dei Fiori traffic doubles. Street Food Time falls in August.
Sestri Levante
Why visit Sestri Levante
Sestri Levante sits at the head of the Tigullio gulf, forty kilometers southeast of Genova, on a former island the Gromolo river silted into a peninsula by the eighteenth century. Roman Segesta Tigullorum was the predecessor; the town joined the Republic of Genova in 1133.
The peninsula splits the coast into two bays that face different ways and carry different names. To the north lies the long beach known as the Bay of Fables, named by a television host in a 1950s broadcast for the Danish writer who stayed here in 1833.
To the south lies the smaller, quieter bay, named by a Ligurian poet in 1919. Between them, on the high ground of the peninsula, stands the old watchtower where an inventor ran some of his most advanced shortwave radio work, work significant enough that the Navy renamed the gulf itself for him.
A town this small holds a beach with a literary name, a bay with a poet's name, and a headland with an engineer's name, three separate claims to attention pressed into one stretch of coast shaped by a silted river.
Pasticcerie Rossignotti, Rezzano Cucina e Vino, Baia del Silenzio and 4 more have been named by a guide.
What to see in Sestri Levante
- Baia del Silenzio. Smaller southern bay enclosed by colorful seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses, named by poet Giovanni Descalzo in 1919.
- Baia delle Favole. Long northern beach and the Bandiera Blu stretch of the town, its name recalling Hans Christian Andersen, who looked out over the water from his inn.
- Torre Marconi. Old watchtower on the heights of the peninsula where Guglielmo Marconi carried out shortwave radio experiments in 1933 and 1934.
How to get to Sestri Levante
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.
✷ We have written about Sestri Levante
“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 Sestri Levante →Tigullio Roadtrip | Four Versions of the Same Liguria
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months on the Tigullio. The sea warms enough for swimming by late May. The Premio Andersen children's literature festival runs in June with author events across the town. Sagra dei Testaieu e Asado a Montedomenico falls in August.
Chiavari
Why visit Chiavari
Chiavari sits on the Riviera di Levante where the Entella meets the Gulf of Tigullio, thirty kilometers east of Genoa. A pre-Roman necropolis from the eighth and seventh centuries BC has been excavated under the centre.
Genoa raised a castle here in 1147 and laid out the medieval town as a grid of porticoed streets, both sides of the carruggio continuous under Gothic columns, the most complete thirteenth-century Genoese commercial plan in Liguria. The Chiavari family produced two doges of the Republic.
In 1801 Napoleon made the city the capital of the Apennines department, one of three administrative units that absorbed Liguria into the French Empire. The Cattedrale di Nostra Signora dell'Orto was built 1613-1633 after a Marian apparition on 2 July 1610 to a local citizen, Sebastiano Descalzo; the neoclassical marble portico modelled on the Pantheon went up in 1841 as a vow for survival from cholera.
Chiavari became a diocese in 1892 and the church a minor basilica in 1904. Slate work, silk weaving and the eponymous Chiavari chair are still made in town.
Antica Osteria Luchin, Gran caffè Defilla, Da Felice and 2 more have been named by a guide.
What to see in Chiavari
- Cattedrale di Nostra Signora dell'Orto. Built 1613-1633 after a Marian apparition in 1610, neoclassical Pantheon-style portico added 1841 as a cholera vow, minor basilica from 1904.
- Caruggio porticato. Thirteenth-century medieval commercial street, both sides continuous under Gothic-columned porticoes, the most intact Genoese plan in Liguria.
- Castello di Chiavari. Genoese fortress built in 1147 above the original town, irregular polygonal walls, partly absorbed into later residential buildings.
How to get to Chiavari
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 32 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September to October are the working months: Bandiera Blu beach swimmable from late May, the seafront walk to Lavagna open in any weather, evenings on Piazza Mazzini under 25 degrees. The Sagra del Pesce in Lavagna next door and the Chiavari book festival in late September draw weekend crowds. July and August fill the lungomare with Milanese and Genovese families, and accommodation runs at three times shoulder rates.
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.
Impronta d'Acqua, Raieü, Aria and 1 more have been named by a guide.
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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