The prettiest villages in the province of Savona

Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena

Why visit Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena

The village takes its second name from the outcrop at whose southern foot it sits, above the valley that gives the area its own name. It dates to the eleventh century and was a fief of the Marquis of Clavesana through the twelfth and thirteenth, before losing importance to neighboring Zuccarello.

It was sold to the House of Savoy in 1623, besieged in 1672, and ceded to the Republic of Genoa. The commune is the second-smallest in Savona province by population.

The fortress stands above the rooftops, reached by its own footpath, while the old core occupies the ground below it, houses and passages knit together by the vaulting that has kept them standing through the region's earthquakes. The parish church sits within that same fabric, its bell tower the one part of the settlement visible from the road below.

What the sequence of ownership and siege did not undo, the building method did: a settlement still standing because its stone was braced to move with the ground rather than break against it.

What to see in Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena

• Castello dei Clavesana. Quadrangular fortress later held by the Del Carretto after the Clavesana line, square-walled and partly collapsed from old sieges, reachable only on foot and still in private ownership.
• Chiesa dell'Assunta. Parish church rebuilt on a medieval core, with an arcaded bell tower visible from the valley road.
• Centro storico. A sequence of arched passages where stone houses lean on each other, the streets passing under the load-bearing vaults below the castle.

How to get to Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 93 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena

Zuccarello

Why visit Zuccarello

Zuccarello sits at 130 meters in the lower Neva valley, seven kilometers north of Albenga and the coast. The borgo was founded in 1248 by the inhabitants of the surrounding valley together with the Marquises of Clavesana, laid out as a single porticoed street that still runs the length of the town, with the bridge closing it off to the south and the church marking its far end to the north.

The castle stands above both, on the hill, the seat from which the marquises held the place. The Marquisate of Zuccarello passed to the Del Carretto branch and ruled the upper valley as an independent fief until the seventeenth century.

It was into this family that the woman born in the town in 1379 belonged, and it was this family's alliance with Lucca that took her away from it: she married to seal the connection between the two houses and died at twenty-six giving birth to her second daughter. The valley that produced her is a minor tributary above a coastal town, and the marble sarcophagus that made her name lasting was carved and placed far from here.

What remains in Zuccarello is the setting rather than the monument: the street, the bridge, the ruined seat of the family, and a house pointed to as the one where she was born.

What to see in Zuccarello

• Ponte Medievale sul Neva. Late medieval, restored in the nineteenth century. The single arch clears the riverbed in one span, and the hump in the deck is steep enough to hide the far bank until the crown of the arch.
• Via Centrale. The length of it reads as one built gesture rather than a row of separate houses: the arcades never break stride from one end of the borgo to the other.
• Castello dei Del Carretto. Ruined fortress on the hill above the village, residence of the Del Carretto marquises, four cylindrical towers and a central keep.

How to get to Zuccarello

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 82 minutes away by road.

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Laigueglia

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.

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

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 85 minutes away by road.

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Borgio Verezzi

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

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 69 minutes away by road.

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Noli

Why visit Noli

Noli sits at four meters on the Riviera di Ponente, fifty kilometers southwest of Genoa. From 1192 to 1797 it was an independent maritime republic, the fifth alongside Genova, Pisa, Venezia and Amalfi, holding the Capo Noli headland and a stretch of coast under its own flag and protected by alliance with Genoa.

The medieval walls still ring the centro storico, and the survivors of an original eight defensive towers still rise above the rooftops, including the Torre dei Quattro Canti and the Torre Papone. Outside the walls stands the Basilica di San Paragorio, an eleventh-century Romanesque church and one of the most important early medieval buildings in Liguria, with a wooden crucifix from the twelfth century and a bishop's throne carved into a single block of stone.

The Capo Noli cliffs end the bay to the south, with footpaths leading to grottos and a hermitage in the rock. The litoraneo carries the Bandiera Blu.

What to see in Noli

• Basilica di San Paragorio. Eleventh-century Romanesque church outside the walls, with a twelfth-century wooden crucifix and a bishop's throne carved from a single block.
• Torre dei Quattro Canti. Surviving medieval defensive tower inside the walled centro storico, one of eight that originally ringed the maritime republic.
• Torre Papone. Second medieval tower of the original defensive ring, still standing above the rooftops of the centro storico.

How to get to Noli

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 58 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Noli

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.

Everything we know about Millesimo

Celle Ligure

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 parish church stands within this old town, its façade carrying the ceramic Assumption by Lucio Fontana, San Michele defeating the dragon rendered in the same medium the town has fired since the seventeenth century.

The pieces read as one place rather than several: a fishing and beach economy along the shore, a ceramic trade worked into the old quarter behind it, and a native artist's public commission set into the church that anchors both.

What to see in Celle Ligure

• Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo. Inside, a Via Crucis by Caminati hangs alongside ceramic stations by Emanuele Luzzati, a pairing of local ceramic craft with the Fontana work on the façade outside.
• 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

There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Genova is roughly 40 minutes away by road.

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Finale Ligure

Why visit Finale Ligure

Finale Ligure spans three boroughs and the slope above them: Finalmarina and Finalpia on the coast, the walled inland borough set back at the junction of the Aquila and Pora streams. The two coastal quarters face the water and carry the beachfront trade; the inland borough, built as the seat of the marquisate under the Del Carretto from the late twelfth century onward, kept the family's fortifications and its street plan intact behind the walls rather than along the shore.

The stronghold above the borgo passed through building, wartime destruction, and rebuilding before the Genoese conquest left it largely dismantled in 1715, and the Spanish fort on the ridge above continued to ring the town after that conquest was complete. The coastal stretch below carries the Bandiera Blu and now serves as the starting point for the karst climbing and mountain-biking circuit that has drawn outdoor sport to Finale since the 1990s.

The arrangement is a working division rather than a coincidence: the fortified marquisate seat set inland and upslope, the modern leisure economy running along the water below it.

What to see in Finale Ligure

• Castel Gavone. Del Carretto stronghold built by Enrico II in 1181, destroyed in the wars with Genoa, rebuilt in 1451-52 and dismantled by the Genoese in 1715, leaving the diamond-faceted Torre dei Diamanti standing.
• Castel San Giovanni. Seventeenth-century Spanish fort on a higher ridge above Finalborgo, still ringing the walled town.
• Finalborgo. Walled medieval borough at the junction of the Aquila and Pora streams, listed among the Borghi più belli d'Italia.

How to get to Finale 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 71 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Finale Ligure