The prettiest small villages in the province of Imperia
The province of Imperia rises fast. Behind the shoreline the land folds into terraces of olive trees, the small dark Taggiasca kind whose oil goes gold and mild, and the villages sit on the ridges above them, built of the local grey stone with roofs of slate and vaulted passageways cut through the houses to keep the wind out. Autumn is the harvest, with mills running and new oil on bruschetta in the village bars. Winter stays soft this far west, and the mountain villages behind Imperia get chestnut flour, rabbit with pine nuts and Taggiasca olives, and hard rye bread that comes out of wood ovens. Spring brings mimosa and broom along the roads that switchback up from the sea.
Most people arrive for the coast, and specifically for Sanremo, with its casino, its flower market and its palm-lined promenade, or for the beach towns strung along the Riviera dei Fiori towards the French border. The train and the Aurelia deliver everyone to the same narrow strip, so parking in August is a negotiation and the seafront restaurants turn over tables at speed. Sanremo is a real town with real history, and it is also where the region concentrates its visitors, its hotels and its traffic. Menton and the Cote d'Azur pull the same crowd a short drive west.
The olive terraces, the stone and the cooking do not stop at the coast road. They climb the Nervia, the Argentina and the Arroscia valleys, into villages that hold markets, mills, painted churches and a few good tables, and where fewer people go because the roads take longer than the motorway suggests. These are the smaller places in the province, the ones assessed and admitted by the national association of Italy's most beautiful villages. Each is worth a detour inland from the shore.
Of the 13 communes we have mapped in the province of Imperia, 11 qualify as prettiest villages: each has passed the assessment of the national association of Italy's most beautiful villages. This list is the small ones, 9 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Seborga, has 276 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best hill towns in the province of Imperia and The best olive oil towns in the province of Imperia.
Seborga
Why visit Seborga
Seborga sits at 517 meters in the hills above Bordighera, 35 kilometers from Monaco. In 954 the counts of Ventimiglia ceded the territory to the Cistercian abbey of Lérins; in 1079 Gregory VII granted the abbots prince-abbot status and the right to mint coins.
The Principality of Seborga ran as a Cistercian state until 1729, when it was sold to Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy. In 1963 Giorgio Carbone, head of the local flower-growers' cooperative, argued the sale had never been properly registered, declared the commune independent, and was elected prince.
The 200 registered voters now elect a sovereign every seven years. Princess Nina Menegatto took the title in 2019.
Seborga prints its own stamps and mints a currency called the luigino. Italy does not recognise any of it, but the town does carry a Bandiera Arancione and a Borghi più belli badge, and on a clear day the view stretches from the Esterel coast to Cap Ferrat.
What to see in Seborga
- Chiesa di San Martino. Seventeenth-century parish church, single nave, the seat of the former Cistercian abbey transformed after the principality lost ecclesiastical status.
- Palazzo dei Monaci. Former Cistercian abbots' residence on the main piazza, now used as the principality's symbolic government building.
- Zecca di Seborga. Old mint that produced the principality's coins from the eleventh century, restored as a small museum on Via Verdi.
How to get to Seborga
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 120 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September to October are the working months: clear afternoons, evenings cool enough for a jacket at 517 meters, the road up from Bordighera passable in any car. The principality holds its main festa in mid-August around Ferragosto, when the population doubles for a weekend and the prince makes a public appearance. July and August can hit 32 degrees on the coast below, but the hilltop stays five degrees cooler.
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.
Apricale
Why visit Apricale
Apricale sits at 273 meters on a rocky spur in the Val Nervia, thirty kilometers west of Imperia and a few kilometers inland from the French border. The name comes from apricus, the Latin word for sunny: the village faces south on a ridge that catches light most of the day.
The Counts of Ventimiglia built the Castello della Lucertola here in the tenth century, called the Lizard Castle because its outline matches the silhouette of the village along the rock. From 1270 the borgo passed to the Doria of Dolceacqua.
The houses cascade down the slope in stone tiers, connected by alleys and stairs rather than streets. The village holds Borghi più belli, Bandiera Arancione, and Città dell'Olio.
Below the centro storico, the Chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angeli dates to the thirteenth century. The Sagra della Pansarola each September celebrates the local sweet fritter eaten with zabaglione.
What to see in Apricale
- Castello della Lucertola. Tenth-century castle of the Counts of Ventimiglia, named for its lizard-shaped outline on the rock, now housing the village museum.
- Chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angeli. Thirteenth-century church at the foot of the village, the oldest religious building in Apricale.
- Chiesa della Purificazione di Maria. Parish church on Piazza Torracca, with a neo-Romanesque façade rebuilt in the nineteenth century.
How to get to Apricale
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 144 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the right months. The terraces are green, the olive harvest runs from October into December, and the light on the south-facing rock matches the Latin name. July and August push into the low thirties; the stone holds heat and the village empties between two and five.
Perinaldo
Why visit Perinaldo
Perinaldo sits seven kilometers inland from Bordighera and the French border, on a ridge above the Val Nervia. The medieval centro storico is built in concentric rings around the old castle, a compact plan that ties church, castle, and town hall together within a short walk of each other.
The astronomer left for Bologna and then for the court of Louis XIV in Paris, where he directed the new Royal Observatory. He did not return, but he sent a canvas back to the Suffragio altar of the parish church in 1672, and the meridian his calculations helped fix is still marked on the sundial of the smaller church on the ridge.
The terraces below the village grow Taggiasca olives, the basis of its Città dell'Olio standing. Perinaldo also holds Borghi più belli and Bandiera Arancione recognition.
The village's shape, ring upon ring around a single high point, mirrors the way its history keeps circling back to one native mind that left for Paris and never stopped sending word home.
What to see in Perinaldo
- Osservatorio Astronomico G. D. Cassini. A dome rises from the inner courtyard of the town hall. On observation evenings the working instrument inside is put to the same sky Cassini once charted from far greater distance, in Paris.
- Chiesa di San Nicola da Bari. Parish church built in 1489, holding a fifteenth-century wooden crucifix and, on the Suffragio altar, a canvas sent back from Paris by its most famous native son.
- Chiesa della Visitazione. Smaller church on the ridge, fitted with a meridian sundial calibrated using the astronomical methods developed by the town's native astronomer.
How to get to Perinaldo
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 132 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the right months on this ridge above the Val Nervia. The terraces green in spring, the olive harvest runs from October into December, and the sky at 572 meters clears most evenings. The observatory schedules its public sessions through spring, summer and early autumn.
Badalucco
Why visit Badalucco
Badalucco sits at 179 meters in the middle Valle Argentina, fifteen kilometers north of Imperia. The torrent that gives the valley its name runs in a wide bend below the village.
The site changed hands between Ligures and Rome in 181 BC, became a fief of the Counts of Ventimiglia, and passed to the Republic of Genova in 1259. The seventeenth century rebuilt the parish Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta e San Giorgio in full Baroque, with a square bell tower and a fifteenth-century polyptych attributed to Giovanni Canavesio.
The caruggi of stone houses are painted with contemporary murals and trompe-l'oeil, a more recent layer over the medieval shell. The Rundin bean, an indigenous variety grown on the terraces, is a Slow Food Presidium.
Stoccafisso alla badalucchese, stockfish stewed in tomato and olives, is the dish: the third Sunday of September brings the Stockfish Festival to the square.
What to see in Badalucco
- Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta e San Giorgio. Seventeenth-century Baroque parish church with a square bell tower, holding a fifteenth-century polyptych attributed to Giovanni Canavesio and a seventeenth-century wooden crucifix.
- Chiesa di San Niccolò. Hilltop church above the old village, on the site of a former noble castle that served as a lookout over the valley.
- Ponte sull'Argentina. Stone bridge across the torrent that wraps the village, connecting the centro storico to the valley road.
How to get to Badalucco
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 122 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months in the Argentina Valley. The terraces above the village hold olive groves, the Rundin bean, and pockets of grapevine. July and August push into the low thirties, but the valley keeps a few degrees cooler than the coast.
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.
Ceriana
Why visit Ceriana
Ceriana sits at 369 meters in the Valle Armea, twenty kilometers west of Imperia and a short climb inland from Sanremo. The Romans built a garrison here called Castrum Coelianae, a watchtower with permanent quarters for legionaries; the name shortened to Ceriana over the centuries.
The town took its present shape in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, passing from the Counts of Ventimiglia to the Mari family in 1297 and to the Republic of Genoa in 1359. The parish church of Santi Pietro e Paolo is reached by climbing the caruggi, narrow Ligurian alleys roofed in places by overpassing houses; inside, an anonymous wooden Virgin from the thirteenth century and a 1526 polyptych of San Pietro in cattedra.
Three confraternities still keep their oratories in town: the Rossi at Santa Caterina, the Azzurri at the Visitazione, and the Neri at the Addolorata. Olive oil from the surrounding terraces carries the Città dell'Olio mark.
What to see in Ceriana
- Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo. Parish church at the top of the caruggi, with a thirteenth-century anonymous wooden Virgin and a 1526 polyptych of San Pietro in cattedra.
- Oratorio di Santa Caterina. Seventeenth-century oratory of the Confraternita dei Rossi, built under the protection of the Senate of Genoa.
- Oratorio della Visitazione. Seat of the Confraternita degli Azzurri, the second of three colour-coded brotherhoods that still organize the town's processions.
How to get to Ceriana
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 121 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the olive flowering on the terraces below the village and warm afternoons that don't yet burn. September and October are the dry months, with the harvest ramping up and pressing beginning in November. Summer is hotter but the 369 meters of elevation keep nights cool enough to sleep; the caruggi stay shaded most of the day.
Cipressa
Why visit Cipressa
Cipressa sits at 232 meters on a ridge above the Ligurian Sea, ten kilometers west of Imperia. The ridge runs inland from the coast road, and the village occupies its high point, with the frazione of Lingueglietta set further west on the same line of hills, its medieval street plan still intact and separate in character from the centro storico below.
Above the village, a tower built against Saracen raids stands as one signal point in a chain that once ran the length of the coast from Ventimiglia to Genova, the raids themselves having shaped settlement patterns here through the late Middle Ages: villages set back and up from the shore, watch points on the high ground. In Lingueglietta the same pressure produced a church converted into a fortified shelter, merlons added to its roofline when the danger from the sea increased.
Below the ridge, the valley is olive country, Taggiasca terraces dropping from the high ground to the coast road. The result is a village whose defensive geography, built to keep distance from the water, now sits directly above a road cut for the opposite purpose: getting from the water to the ridge as fast as possible.
What to see in Cipressa
- Torre Gallinara. Cylindrical form on the ridge above the village, a viewpoint across the Riviera dei Fiori from the walkway that circles its base.
- Chiesa Fortezza di San Pietro. Proto-Romanesque church in Lingueglietta, its roofline still carrying the merlons added when pirate raids intensified along the coast.
- Lingueglietta. Frazione on the western ridge with intact medieval streets, reached by the road that climbs away from the centro storico.
How to get to Cipressa
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 106 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September to October are the windows for walking the ridge and cycling the climb itself: olive groves green, the coast clear from the Torre Gallinara, evenings under 25 degrees. Milano-San Remo runs in mid to late March, when the climb is at its hardest because winter rains have left the road surface uneven. July and August are hot on the coast below; the 232-metre elevation keeps the village cooler but cycling is best at dawn.
Pieve di Teco
Why visit Pieve di Teco
Pieve di Teco sits at 240 meters in the middle Arroscia valley, twenty kilometers northwest of Imperia. The town was not a slow medieval accretion: it was deliberately founded in 1233 around a parish church, a mill and a well, on a flat stretch where the main roads of the upper valley converged, with the explicit purpose of running a market.
Manufactures followed of paper, leather, soap, ropes, cloth and footwear. The Clavesana family held it until 1386, when it passed to Genoa, and it changed hands repeatedly through the wars that crossed the Ligurian Apennines.
The Corso Mario Ponzoni, porticoed since the sixteenth century, runs the length of the original market layout, and the eighteenth-century Collegiata di San Giovanni Battista anchors one of its squares. The Teatro Salvini, with around a hundred seats, is the second-smallest functioning theater in Italy.
The commune is the seat of the Unione dei Comuni della Valle Arroscia.
What to see in Pieve di Teco
- Corso Mario Ponzoni. Porticoed market street running the length of the original 1233 town plan, with two-storey houses above the sixteenth-century arcades.
- Collegiata di San Giovanni Battista. Eighteenth-century collegiate church overlooking one of the squares on the Corso, the religious anchor of the upper Arroscia valley.
- Teatro Salvini. Roughly one hundred seats, the second-smallest functioning theater in Italy, still in regular use for chamber-scale productions.
How to get to Pieve di Teco
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 94 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October work well for Pieve di Teco. The Arroscia valley at 240 meters runs cooler than the coast through summer; July and August are warm but tolerable, with the porticoed Corso providing continuous shade. The autumn harvest brings the Taggiasca olive picking and the first pressings.
