The best small coastal towns you can reach by train in Liguria

1. Framura

Best for a small town. 553 people live here.

59 min from Genoa · homes €2,650 to €3,900 a m² in the center · 553 people

Why visit Framura

Framura is not one village but five: Anzo on the water, Setta and Ravecca on the slope, Costa above them, and Castagnola at roughly 300 meters with views back down to the coast. The commune spans from the rocky shoreline to 845 meters inland on the ridge that separates the Cinque Terre coast from the Vara valley.

Byzantine settlers built the original circular watchtowers here against Saracen raids, three of them still standing on the coast and inland. The hamlets remained agricultural until the Genova-La Spezia railway tunneled through in the late nineteenth century, opening the commune to summer visitors.

The seafront below Anzo, reached by a converted railway tunnel turned cycle path, carries the Bandiera Blu, and the same path runs north toward Bonassola and Levanto. Framura is the quiet outlier on this coast: the closest Borghi più belli village to Monterosso al Mare without being in the Cinque Terre national park.

The catch: It has lost 15% of its people since 2015.

What to see in Framura

• Torri bizantine. Three surviving Byzantine watchtowers on the coast and ridge, built to defend the village from Saracen incursions.
• Castagnola. Highest of the five hamlets at around 300 meters, with views over the lower frazioni and the Riviera di Levante.
• Anzo waterfront. Coastal hamlet at sea level with the Bandiera Blu beach access, the lowest of Framura's five settlements.

How to get to Framura

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 59 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Framura

2. Deiva Marina

Best for a small town. 1,291 people live here.

50 min from Genoa · homes €2,150 to €3,900 a m² in the center · 1,291 people

Why visit Deiva Marina

The commune sits at the bottom of a valley running from Monte San Nicolao, eight hundred meters up, down to the Ligurian Sea, fifty kilometers east of Genoa. The territory is first documented in a Carolingian imperial diploma of 774, but for most of its history the settlement stayed inland: the coastal plain flooded, and Barbary raids made the shore too exposed to live on.

The villages up the slope were the town. The seafront had no fixed population until the railway reached it, and the seafront that grew up afterward, around the station and a hotel called Albergo Savoia, is a nineteenth-century addition to a place whose real age lies up the hill.

The round watchtower near the sea was partly demolished by a flash flood in 1852, a reminder that the coast it guarded was never entirely tame even after settlement arrived. What the geography adds up to is a town in two pieces on two timelines: an old, defended, inland Deiva that predates the sea by centuries, and a young shoreline that only exists because a railway made the coast safe to build on.

What to see in Deiva Marina

• Torre Saracena. The square tower stands beside the church, its stone weathered, a lookout post scaled to a coastline once undefended by anything larger.
• Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Abate. Still the parish church, standing in what was the original inland centro storico before the seafront existed, dedicated to the Egyptian hermit.
• Spiaggia di Deiva Marina. Shallow sand and shingle running below the railway station, wide enough that the crowds it draws spread rather than crush.

How to get to Deiva Marina

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 50 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Deiva Marina

3. Laigueglia

Best for a swim. The comune's beach holds a Blue Flag.

1 h 25 min from Genoa · homes €3,500 to €5,200 a m² in the center · 1,678 people

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.

The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,200 a m².

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

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 1 h 25 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Laigueglia

4. Vernazza

Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.

1 h 41 min from Genoa · homes €3,800 to €5,600 a m² in the center · 697 people

Written about. No. 56. Read the letter →

Why visit Vernazza

Vernazza sits at sea level, the middle of the five villages along this stretch of coast and the only one with a natural harbor. The houses stack vertically up the gorge of the Vernazzola torrent, painted in faded ochres and pinks, with the square at the harbor marking the seaward end of Via Roma and the social center of the village.

On 25 October 2011, a freak rainstorm dropped 22 inches of water in four hours. The torrent burst its culvert and buried the main street under four meters of mud and debris.

Three people died. The village was closed for months, and most of the houses on Via Roma had to be excavated to the second story before it reopened.

The harbor, the fortified height above it, and the terraced slopes behind form a single working shape: a landing place guarded from above and fed from the terraces, all of it packed into a gorge narrow enough that a few hours of rain could bury the street from end to end.

The catch: It has lost 19% of its people since 2015.

What to see in Vernazza

• Castello Doria. The keep and the Belforte tower stand over the harbor, built by the Doria as a defense against Saracen raids.
• Chiesa di Santa Margherita d'Antiochia. Fourteenth-century church on a rock platform at the edge of the harbor, documented from 1318, the gothic anchor of the village.
• Porto di Vernazza. The only natural harbor in the Cinque Terre, with a small pebble beach and a ferry pier serving the four other villages and Portovenere.

How to get to Vernazza

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 1 h 41 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Vernazza

5. Riomaggiore

Best for walks in a national park. Part of the comune lies in a national park.

1 h 28 min from Pisa · homes €3,400 to €5,000 a m² in the center · 1,287 people

Written about. No. 55. Read the letter →

Why visit Riomaggiore

The village sits at the eastern end of the coastal line running out of La Spezia, first among the five reached along that route. It is documented from 1251, when the Carpena district swore allegiance to Genoa.

The castle went up first, begun in 1260 against pirate raids; the church followed in 1340 under Bishop Antonio Fieschi, its neo-Gothic front a much later addition from 1870, with a Maragliano crucifix still inside. The terraces above the rooftops were cut into the slope in the Middle Ages and are still worked by hand, producing the Cinque Terre DOC whites and the sweet Sciacchetrà.

The built village is compact: castle and church above, the narrow harbor below at the water's edge, boats hauled onto the slipway between the breakwaters. Pixar set Luca here in 2021, lightly disguised as Portorosso.

Roughly 2.5 million annual visitors now reach a commune of 1,287 residents, a ratio that says as much about the place as any single monument: a fishing settlement of one street and one slipway, built to hold far fewer people than now pass through it, sized against a public many times its own population.

The catch: It has lost 19% of its people since 2015.

What to see in Riomaggiore

• Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Built in 1340 under Bishop Antonio Fieschi, rebuilt with a neo-Gothic façade in 1870, holds a wooden crucifix by Anton Maria Maragliano.
• Castello di Riomaggiore. Begun in 1260 by the Marchesi Turcotti against pirate raids, completed by Genoa two centuries later, twin cylindrical towers above the village.
• Via dell'Amore. The path clings to the cliff face between two villages, the sea directly below and the rock wall pressing close on the other side.

How to get to Riomaggiore

It has its own railway station. Pisa is about 1 h 28 min away by road. The full route from Pisa.

Everything we know about Riomaggiore

6. Monterosso al Mare

Best for a long lunch. Food guides list three tables here.

1 h 18 min from Genoa · homes €3,800 to €5,600 a m² in the center · 1,324 people

Written about. No. 54. Read the letter →

Why visit Monterosso al Mare

The village splits into two halves on either side of a headland: the older centro storico and, on the other side, the Fegina seafront where the railway runs behind the sand. The Capuchin convent looks out over both sides from that same headland, the hinge on which the whole layout turns.

Above the rooftops, at 464 meters, a hilltop sanctuary has stood on the same ground, by tradition, since 740 and is called the oldest Marian site in Liguria. The parish church down in the old town, banded in black and white marble, was built centuries later, so the two put a long stretch of the coast's religious history on display within sight of each other.

Montale's villa stood in Fegina, and the rocks and cliffs he carried into Ossi di seppia are the same ones visible from either half of the village. The geography here is the story: a headland dividing old from new, and a hillside holding the older of the two by several centuries.

The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,600 a m².

What to see in Monterosso al Mare

• Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Parish church built 1282-1307 with a black-and-white-banded marble façade and a fresco of the baptism of Christ over the main portal.
• Santuario di Nostra Signora di Soviore. Hilltop sanctuary at 464 meters above the village, first documented in 1244 and dated by tradition to 740, called the oldest Marian site in Liguria.
• Convento dei Cappuccini. Seventeenth-century Capuchin convent on the San Cristoforo headland, separating the centro storico from Fegina.

How to get to Monterosso al Mare

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 1 h 18 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Monterosso al Mare

7. Camogli

Best for everyday life on foot. Eight of the ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.

33 min from Genoa · homes €4,100 to €6,100 a m² in the center · 4,882 people

Written about. No. 24. Read the letter →

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.

The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €6,100 a m².

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

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 33 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Camogli

8. Borgio Verezzi

Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.

1 h 9 min from Genoa · homes €3,000 to €4,800 a m² in the center · 2,106 people

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

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 1 h 9 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Borgio Verezzi

9. Moneglia

Best for everyday life on foot. Eight of the ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.

57 min from Genoa · homes €3,200 to €4,700 a m² in the center · 2,486 people

Why visit Moneglia

Moneglia sits at four meters in a bay on the Riviera di Levante, bracketed by two wooded headlands, one to the west and one to the east. The Romans used the bay as a stop on the Via Aurelia, and the village was a fief of the Fieschi family from Lavagna until 1153, when it passed to the Republic of Genoa, which raised fortifications on both headlands to hold the bay and the coast road below them.

The painter Luca Cambiaso, the town's defining figure, was born here in 1527, one of the most important Genoese painters of the sixteenth century. The single railway tunnel under the eastern headland, alternating one-way traffic, still controls car access to the village in summer, a modern detail that keeps the old geography of a bay closed by two points of land in working order today.

What to see in Moneglia

• Chiesa di San Giorgio. Reached through a parvis at the edge of the centro storico, in use by the Franciscans since 1396. The Adoration of the Magi by Luca Cambiaso hangs inside, a work by the town's own painter still in the building he would have known.
• Bay of Moneglia. The sand gives way at either end to smaller rocky coves reachable only from the sea, a rougher edge to the beachfront that the Bandiera Blu award does not describe.
• Castello di Monleone. Medieval fortification on the western headland, raised by the Genoese to control the bay and the Via Aurelia.

How to get to Moneglia

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 57 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Moneglia

10. Bogliasco

Best for a day out from Genoa. It is 16 min by car.

16 min from Genoa · homes €2,650 to €3,900 a m² in the center · 4,298 people

Why visit Bogliasco

Bogliasco sits 15 kilometers east of Genoa on the Riviera di Levante, where the Bogliasco torrent meets the sea between two rocky headlands. Archaeological surveys on the slopes of Mount Cordona found stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic and Mesolithic, and Roman-era artefacts confirm that the corridor down from the Val Fontanabuona to the coast was a transit route for imperial troops.

The village's signature monument is the medieval bridge near the mouth of the torrent, traditionally called il ponte romano although the surviving structure is Romanesque, built in the 13th century and remodelled in the 17th. The historic center tightens around the parish church of Natività di Maria Santissima (a baroque rebuild of an earlier Romanesque oratory) and a network of stepped alleys (creuze) climbing into the olive terraces above.

The cove below is small, pebbled, and clear enough that the village's ASD Bogliasco club has produced multiple Italian national water polo and synchronised swimming champions. The Genoa metropolitan train brings Bogliasco into Liguria's commuter belt (twenty minutes from Brignole), which is why the pastel houses are kept lived-in rather than picture-postcard.

What to see in Bogliasco

• Ponte medievale (il "ponte romano"). 13th-century Romanesque stone bridge near the mouth of the Bogliasco torrent, remodelled in the 17th century. Named romano colloquially but architecturally Romanesque.
• Chiesa della Natività di Maria Santissima. Baroque parish church rebuilt on the footprint of an earlier Romanesque oratory, with a 17th-century facade overlooking the seafront.
• Spiaggia di Bogliasco. Small pebbled cove tucked between two rocky points, the home beach of the ASD Bogliasco water polo and synchronised swimming clubs.

How to get to Bogliasco

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 16 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Bogliasco