The 8 best small towns you can reach by train that eat well within 90 minutes of Genoa

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.

L'Agave is listed in the MICHELIN Guide and Gambero Rosso.

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. 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.

Savô is listed in the MICHELIN Guide and Gambero Rosso.

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

3. Borgio Verezzi

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

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.

Doc is listed in the MICHELIN Guide.

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

4. Monterosso al Mare

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

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.

Da Miky (MICHELIN), L'Ancora della Tortuga (MICHELIN) and Buranco (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.

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

5. 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.

La Loggia is listed in Gambero Rosso.

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

6. Campo Ligure

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

41 min from Genoa · homes €680 to €1,000 a m² in the center · 2,796 people

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 meters tall and six across.

The first filigree workshop opened in 1884. Within a generation Campo Ligure had become the national center for the craft, fine gold and silver threads twisted with pliers called bruscelle and welded under a torch.

It remains the only working filigree center 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.

Caccia C'à Bugge is listed in Slow Food's Osterie d'Italia and Gambero Rosso.

What to see in Campo Ligure

• Castello Spinola. Twelfth and thirteenth-century hexagonal fortress on the hill above the village, cylindrical tower 22 meters 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

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

Everything we know about Campo Ligure

7. 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.

Il Bistrotto is listed in Gambero Rosso.

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

8. Celle Ligure

Best for a day out from Genoa. It is 40 min by car.

40 min from Genoa · homes €3,200 to €5,300 a m² in the center · 4,795 people

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 pieces read as one place rather than several: a fishing and beach economy along the shore and a ceramic trade worked into the old quarter behind it.

Meta Ristorante is listed in the MICHELIN Guide.

The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,300 a m².

What to see in Celle Ligure

• Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo. Inside, a Via Crucis by Caminati hangs alongside ceramic stations by Emanuele Luzzati.
• 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

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 40 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Celle Ligure