The best small towns inside a nature park in Liguria
Liguria is narrow enough that a park boundary can hold both a beech wood and a beach. Inland, the Apennine parks are made of chestnut and beech, slate quarries, streams cold enough in August to hurt, and villages built from grey stone with green slate roofs and tall thin houses pressed together against the wind. The eating changes with the altitude: focaccia and anchovies near the water, then testaroli, borage ravioli, wild mushrooms, chestnut flour and the sheep's cheeses of the upper valleys. Autumn is the season the parks are best, when the mushroom season opens and the beech turns copper, though spring brings the wildflower meadows of the Ligurian watershed and clear long views to Corsica on a hard blue day.
Almost everyone who comes to this coast goes to the Cinque Terre, and the reasoning is sound: it is a national park, the trails run between the villages, and the terraced vineyards falling into the sea are as good as the pictures. The consequence is a single-track railway carrying more people than any village of that size can absorb, timed-entry paths, and a queue for the boat in July. The park is protected land under real pressure, and the pressure is concentrated into a stretch of coast you can walk in a day.
Liguria's protected land does not stop there. The regional parks continue north into the Aveto valley towards the Piedmont border, west along the Beigua ridge above Savona, inland to the beech forests around the Argentina valley, and out along the promontory of pines and coves east of Genoa, and there are small towns living inside all of them. The towns below each sit within a regional nature park, and fewer people go.
Of the 54 communes we have mapped in Liguria, 15 qualify as towns inside a nature park: each sits inside a regional nature park. This list is the small ones, 10 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Portofino, has 355 residents.
If you are still choosing, we have also written The best small towns inside a nature park that eat well in Liguria and The best towns inside a nature park that eat well in Liguria.
Triora
Why visit Triora
Triora sits at 776 meters in the upper Valle Argentina, the last comune before the Alpi Liguri turn into French territory. The site was a Genovese stronghold from the thirteenth century, fortified with five castles, three of which still leave traces.
Between 1587 and 1589, after two years of failed harvests and famine, the council of elders blamed a group of women living in seclusion in La Cabotina, the poorest quarter, and called in the Inquisition. Around 200 women were accused, many tortured, some died in custody.
Genova intervened to slow the trials; the survivors were eventually freed. The Museo Etnografico e della Stregoneria, in the former prison, holds the documents and reconstructs the herbalism, the famine, and the trial process.
The Pane di Triora is a slow-rising rustic bread baked in wood ovens that keeps for two weeks. Wolves and chamois return to the surrounding ridges.
What to see in Triora
- Museo Etnografico e della Stregoneria. Witchcraft and ethnography museum in the former village prison, with trial documents, herbal knowledge, and a reconstruction of La Cabotina.
- La Cabotina. The poorest quarter at the edge of the village, where the women accused of witchcraft in 1587-1589 lived, now a marked walking circuit.
- Collegiata di Nostra Signora Assunta. Parish church with a fourteenth-century Baptism of Christ by Taddeo di Bartolo, the oldest dated work in Liguria.
How to get to Triora
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 148 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October are the months Triora is fully open. The Argentina valley greens in spring and holds color into autumn. The witchcraft museum, the Cabotina circuit, and the Saccarello trails are accessible from late spring through early autumn. Processione Del Monte falls in April.
Santo Stefano d'Aveto
Why visit Santo Stefano d'Aveto
The Upper Val d'Aveto sits forty-five kilometers from Genova, on the border with the provinces of Parma, Piacenza and La Spezia, a position that puts the commune closer to Emilian territory than to the Ligurian coast. Frederick Barbarossa granted the fief to the Malaspina in the twelfth century.
It later passed to the Fieschi and then to the Doria, a succession that left its mark in the layered stonework of the castle rising off the central piazza and in the church furnishings donated generations later by a member of the same Doria line. The town's two halves work on different clocks: the historic center, built around the castle and the piazza, and the higher ground toward the peaks above the valley, given over to the ski area in winter and to the reservoir at Giacopiane in the warmer months.
A commune this high, on a border this far inland, ends up organized less around a single center than around the alternation of the seasons that use its slopes and its lake in turn.
What to see in Santo Stefano d'Aveto
- Castello Malaspina-Doria. Fortress on an irregular polygonal base off the central piazza. The walls still show the outline of successive rebuildings by the families who held the fief.
- Santuario della Madonna di Guadalupe. Parish church built around the donated painting and the door medallion, a small pilgrimage point folded into the ordinary fabric of the town center.
- Monte Bue ski area. Two new chairlifts carry skiers up the slope, the only lift-served skiing in the region and a rare winter draw at this elevation.
How to get to Santo Stefano d'Aveto
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 81 minutes away by road.
Our tip
December through March is the season of the Monte Bue lifts and the only Ligurian ski runs, with snow held above 1,200 meters when conditions are right. June through September is the warm counterpart, with hikes to Lago di Giacopiane and Monte Maggiorasca and temperatures around 22 to 25 degrees, ten cooler than the coast. April and May, October and November are the shoulder months, when the lifts close, the snow melts, and the village rests; many hotels close. Focaccia in Contrada a Santo Stefano d'Aveto falls in August.
Sassello
Why visit Sassello
Sassello sits at 381 meters on the northern flank of the Ligurian Apennines, inside a UNESCO Global Geopark that stretches between Genova and Savona. The old village divides into two bastie: the Bastia Soprana, dating to the twelfth century, and the Bastia Sottana, founded by the Doria in the fifteenth, the two halves joined by stone bridges over the Sansobbia stream and threaded with frescoed palaces and baroque churches.
Most visitors arrive from Savona, thirty kilometers south, or from Genova, thirty-five east. The biscuit that carries the town's name past its own borders began in an ordinary kitchen: Geltrude Rossi ran an inn with a kitchen in the centro, and in 1860 started baking small almond biscuits she eventually named amaretti.
By 1892 they had a bronze medal at the Columbian celebrations; by 1911, gold in Paris. The Rossi and Virginia families still make them, and the town holds the trademark on amaretti morbidi di Sassello.
A hill town shaped by a river split and a fifteenth-century feudal addition has, almost as an aside, given its name to something baked in a kitchen and sent to Paris. The geography explains the two halves of the village; the biscuit explains why the name travels.
What to see in Sassello
- Centro storico. Two-bastia village of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries split by the Sansobbia, with frescoed palaces and baroque churches.
- Chiesa della Santissima Trinità. Parish church in the Bastia Sottana, baroque interior with stuccoed vaults and seventeenth-century altarpieces.
- Parco naturale regionale del Beigua. Geopark land stretching between Genova and Savona, reaching up to the peak that anchors it and gives the long sightline to the sea.
How to get to Sassello
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 72 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the strongest months for walking the Beigua and pairing the trails with the bakeries on Via Badano. July and August are warm but the elevation keeps the heat below the coastal numbers; the village fills with families from Savona and Genova on summer weekends. November through March is quiet, with the amaretti workshops in steady production for the holiday markets and the Beigua sometimes under snow above 1,000 meters.
Portofino
Why visit Portofino
Portofino occupies the smallest municipal territory in the Metropolitan City of Genova, 355 residents on a horseshoe harbor on the southern tip of the Portofino headland. The whole commune sits inside the Portofino Regional Natural Park and the Portofino Protected Marine Area.
Roman fortification stood on the hill above the harbor; the medieval Genoese fort took the name Castello di San Giorgio, was later renamed Castello Brown after the British consul who bought it in 1867. British and then northern European aristocrats discovered the village in the late nineteenth century.
Aubrey Herbert and Elizabeth von Arnim were among the early regulars. By 1950 tourism had replaced fishing as the main industry.
The Chiesa di San Giorgio, first built in 1154 and destroyed by a wartime bomb, was rebuilt in 1950 on the 1760 plans. The painted facades around the harbor are the photograph everyone takes.
The footpaths into the park behind the village are the reason to stay longer than the cruise day-trippers.
What to see in Portofino
- Castello Brown. Genoese coastal fort raised over a Roman site, renamed in 1867 after British consul Montague Yeats Brown, now a historic house museum above the harbor.
- Chiesa di San Giorgio. Church first built in 1154, destroyed in Second World War bombing, rebuilt in 1950 on 1760 plans, on the path up to Castello Brown.
- Faro di Portofino. Lighthouse at the tip of the Portofino headland, walking distance from the harbor along the Punta del Capo coastal path.
How to get to Portofino
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 78 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Portofino
“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 Portofino →Tigullio Roadtrip | Four Versions of the Same Liguria
Our tip
May through June and September into October are the best months. The harbor is open, the park trails are dry, and the day-tripper rush from cruise ships is less intense than in midsummer. July and August fill the piazzetta from late morning to dusk, the ferry queues from Santa Margherita stretch to the seafront, and parking is closed to outside cars.
Brugnato
Why visit Brugnato
Brugnato sits at 115 meters in the Val di Vara, the broad inland valley that runs from the Apennine ridge down toward the La Spezia coast. The town grew around a monastery dedicated to Saint Columbanus, the Irish missionary who founded Bobbio in 614, and the settlement that formed around it took its shape from the monks' presence long before it took its later civic form.
The centro storico is laid out on a rare medieval grid for Liguria, straight lanes of pastel houses inside a walled perimeter, set on a low rise inside a meander of the river. The layout and the site both point back to the same origin: a religious foundation that outgrew its walls and organized a town around itself, one that later carried authority over the surrounding valley as a bishopric until 1820.
Brugnato holds Borghi più belli, Bandiera Arancione, and Infioritalia, the last for the Corpus Domini flower-petal carpets that cover the streets each June. The town's present character, an inland valley seat with a monastic and diocesan past now expressed mostly through architecture and a single yearly ritual, follows directly from that founding order having outlasted the institutions that built it.
What to see in Brugnato
- Concattedrale dei Santi Pietro, Lorenzo e Colombano. The building rises over the foundations of the older monastery, its eleventh and twelfth century stonework the visible layer above what the monks left underneath.
- Museo Diocesano. Diocesan museum housed in the former Episcopal Palace next to the cathedral, with sacred art and documents from the long bishopric.
- Centro storico. Walled medieval grid of pastel houses, a rare orthogonal layout in Liguria, set on a low rise inside a meander of the river.
How to get to Brugnato
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 62 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Brugnato
“You walk in expecting a town, and the town never arrives. You get the coil, the colors, the empty windows, the church waiting in the middle like a spider that stopped being hungry centuries ago. Somewhere under the cathedral floor, the diocese says, lie the remains of a Roman post and two older churches, layer under layer under layer, the whole history of the place stacked vertically because the plan never allowed it to spread.”
Read our piece on Brugnato →Brugnato | The Town With No Piazza
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the right months in the Val di Vara. The valley turns green in spring, holds its color into early summer, and dries to gold in autumn. Corpus Domini, late May or early June depending on the year, brings the Infiorata to the streets of the centro storico.
Portovenere
Why visit Portovenere
Portovenere closes the western mouth of the Gulf of La Spezia, three kilometers south of the city by water, facing the islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto across open water. The Roman Portus Veneris dates to at least the first century BC, named for a temple to Venus on the promontory that now carries the striped church at the harbour mouth.
Genoa took control in 1113 and fortified the town as the southern anchor of its Riviera defences, opposite Pisan Lerici across the gulf: the fortress above the harbour and the church on the rock were built to face each other's rival coast rather than each other. The upper town holds the castle and its Romanesque parish church, rebuilt after a fire in 1340 damaged that quarter; the single medieval street below runs parallel to the harbour, its plan unchanged since Genoa first laid the town out in the twelfth century.
The promontory church stands apart from both, reachable along the water's edge, with the sea cave that took Byron's name cut into the rock beneath it. A fortified street, a hilltop castle and a temple site turned church: the town reads as a defensive line built along a single spine of rock, with the gulf doing the rest of the work UNESCO recognized in 1997.
What to see in Portovenere
- Chiesa di San Pietro. Consecrated 1198, black and white striped Gothic rebuild from 1256-1277, on the rocky promontory where the Roman temple of Venus stood.
- Castello Doria. First cited 1139, rebuilt 1161, expanded into the seventeenth century, the Genoese fortress above the harbour, prison under Napoleonic rule.
- Grotta dell'Arpaia. Sea cave below San Pietro, also called Byron's Grotto for the English poet who swam from here to Lerici across the gulf to visit Shelley.
How to get to Portovenere
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Pisa is roughly 83 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Portovenere
“Most people spend a few hours in Portovenere between the ferry and the aperitivo. We gave it three weeks, and the town we got was the one the couple on the balcony lived in: vertical, repetitive, almost monastic, a town where the day is a staircase you climb the same way at the same hours, where the luxuries are a balcony the size of a doormat and an espresso stretched to thirty minutes because there is no reason on earth to drink it faster.”
Read our piece on Portovenere →Portovenere | The Slowest Coffee in Italy
Our tip
April through June and September to October are the working windows. Ferries to Palmaria run on full schedules from May onwards; the gulf is calm enough to swim by late May. July and August fill the carruggio and the Castello Doria, accommodation runs at three times shoulder rates, and the queue for the climb to San Pietro can reach an hour. Sagra Pansa E Stacca falls in June.
Ameglia
Why visit Ameglia
The Magra was the Roman Macra, the eastern boundary of Liguria, and the hill at Ameglia stands on the border between Lunigiana and the Riviera where that river reaches the sea. Genoa bought part of the fief in 1141, the bishops took it back by 1284, and Castruccio Castracani of Lucca conquered it in 1321: a small fortress passed between larger powers for three and a half centuries before it settled into the shape it now has.
The marina at the river mouth is a separate world from the hill town above it. Where the castle and its concentric streets sit on the summit, the frazione at the water is a former fishing village, flat, tied to the tide and to summer moorings rather than to the bishops who once held the heights.
The two headlands south of that marina are reachable only by boat or steep footpath, cut off from the estuary settlement by their own geography rather than by distance. The town, in effect, is two places joined by the same river: a fortified height that answered to Luni and Genoa, and a working shoreline that answered to the sea.
What to see in Ameglia
- Castello di Ameglia. Rebuilt in 1174 on a tenth-century footprint, episcopal fortress of the bishops of Luni, cylindrical keep above the Magra estuary.
- Centro storico di Ameglia. Concentric medieval streets around the castle, twelfth and thirteenth-century houses with stone arches and external staircases.
- Bocca di Magra. Old fishing village and marina at the river mouth, summer mooring for small craft, departure point for Punta Corvo by sea.
How to get to Ameglia
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Pisa is roughly 60 minutes away by road.
✷ We have written about Ameglia
“It has the best panorama in Liguria, full stop, and I do not think it is close. The reasons are two. The first is the obvious one. You are 266 meters up, the cliff is high enough that there is no rocky beach below to draw a crowd, the sea on one side is the Gulf of La Spezia with Portovenere across the water and the Cinque Terre fading north, and the view on the other side is the Magra running into its delta with the white Apuane behind it and Tuscany beyond.”
Read our piece on Ameglia →Magra Delta Roadtrip | A Tagine, a Lighthouse, and a Dead Roman City
Our tip
April through June and September to October bring the river's best months: clear estuary water, the headland walks down to Punta Corvo manageable, marinas at Bocca di Magra not yet at summer capacity. July and August fill the river mouth with summer boats from across the Gulf of Poets, and the road down from the borgo backs up on weekends. The Sagra del Pesce in mid-August draws thousands. Mercato Settimanale Di Ameglia falls in August.
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.
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.
Campo Ligure
Why visit Campo Ligure
Campo Ligure sits on the right bank of the Stura at 342 meters, twenty-five kilometers north of Genoa where the Apennines start to climb. The Spinola family took the fief in the thirteenth century and built the hexagonal castle on the hill above the village; the cylindrical tower is more than twenty-two metres tall and six across.
The first filigree workshop opened in 1884. Within a generation Campo Ligure had become the national centre for the craft, fine gold and silver threads twisted with pliers called bruscelle and welded under a torch.
It remains the only working filigree centre in Italy. The Museo della Filigrana, founded in 1984 around the Pietro Carlo Bosio collection, holds filigree work from across the world.
A medieval stone bridge over the Stura, originally ninth-century and rebuilt several times from the eighteenth century onward, anchors the lower end of the borgo.
What to see in Campo Ligure
- Castello Spinola. Twelfth and thirteenth-century hexagonal fortress on the hill above the village, cylindrical tower 22 metres tall, residence of the Spinola fief.
- Museo della Filigrana Pietro Carlo Bosio. Founded 1984 around the Bosio collection, filigree work from across the world, the only museum of its kind in Italy.
- Ponte medievale sullo Stura. Stone bridge over the Stura with ninth-century origins, rebuilt several times from the eighteenth century, marks the southern entrance to the borgo.
How to get to Campo 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 41 minutes away by road.
Our tip
May through October is the working window: the Stura runs clear, the trail network up into the Parco del Beigua opens, the filigree workshops keep their doors open for visitors. The Mostra della Filigrana in late August is the year's main draw, three days of open studios and demonstrations. July and August can touch 30 degrees in the valley but the 342-metre elevation keeps evenings cool.
Millesimo
Why visit Millesimo
Millesimo sits sixty kilometers inland from Genoa, over the Apennine watershed, in the upper reaches of the valley that gives the wider area its name. Enrico II Del Carretto turned the village into a fortified borgo in 1206, and his successors raised the castle later in the same century on the high ground above the settlement.
The town itself grew on the right bank of the river below that castle, its stone houses laid out in a triangle around the central piazza, with the fortified bridge carrying the crossing at the valley floor and the pilgrimage sanctuary set apart on the outskirts as the valley's separate religious focus. More than three thousand casualties fell on each side when Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the combined Austro-Sardinian forces here on 13-14 April 1796, directing the campaign from the Del Carretto palazzo on the piazza that now serves as the town hall.
The pattern is one of a small defensive settlement whose river crossing, castle and family seat all sit within sight of each other, later put to use for a battle whose scale had nothing to do with the size of the place that hosted it.
What to see in Millesimo
- Ponte della Gaietta. The old fortified body still spans the river below the village, narrow enough that its defensive purpose is obvious from either bank.
- Castello Del Carretto. Tower, keep and east wall stand above the village on the high ground, the stronghold that gave the marquis line command of the valley approach.
- Palazzo Del Carretto. The family palazzo faces the central piazza and now serves as the town hall, its rooms the setting for the 1796 headquarters rather than a battlefield relic.
How to get to Millesimo
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 73 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the dry months in the upper Val Bormida. The interior of Liguria runs cooler than the coast at this elevation, with mild days and chilly evenings; the rivers run higher in spring after the watershed melt. July and August warm up but Millesimo's 429 meters stay tolerable.
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