The 10 best towns with a food festival that have a serious restaurant in Liguria

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.

Umami, Cian de Bià have been named by a guide.

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

Genova is roughly 122 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Badalucco

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.

Meta Ristorante have been named by a guide.

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 a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Genova is roughly 40 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Celle Ligure

Recco

Why visit Recco

Recco sits on a small inlet of the Golfo Paradiso between Sori and Camogli, fifteen kilometers from Genova. The town's viaduct made it a strategic Allied target in the second world war; the 1943 bombings killed 127 inhabitants and left the town to be rebuilt through the late 1940s and early 1950s, so the church, the bridge and much of the fabric standing today date from that reconstruction rather than before it.

The focaccia has documented origins in the nineteenth century, well before the war or the IGP designation gave it formal status, and it is made in a small cluster of towns along this stretch of coast, of which Recco is only one, though the one that gives the dish its name. Pro Recco's history runs on a separate track entirely, a club founded in 1913 whose record has nothing to do with the town's postwar rebuilding.

What ties the two together is only the place itself: a small gulf town, destroyed and remade, that carries a nineteenth-century food and a twentieth-century sporting dynasty as its two claims to notice.

Da ö Vittorio, Manuelina have been named by a guide.

What to see in Recco

• Santuario di Nostra Signora del Suffragio. The campanile rebuilt on the site of the main church lost to the bombings is the tallest postwar bell tower in Liguria.
• Golfo Paradiso seafront. Small inlet between Sori and Camogli, with the Bandiera Blu beach and a short lungomare looking south to the Portofino peninsula.
• Ponte di Recco. The rebuilt railway viaduct stands on the site of the structure that drew the wartime bombings, and remains the spine of the modern town.

How to get to Recco

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 25 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Recco

Monterosso al Mare

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 since 740, older than the village below it and 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, L'Ancora della Tortuga, Buranco have been named by a guide.

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, occupied by a church since 740, 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

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 78 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Monterosso al Mare

Lerici

Why visit Lerici

The Gulf of La Spezia takes its eastern shore here, and English Romantics renamed that shore the Bay of Poets after Byron and Shelley made it their address in the early 19th century. The fortress that defines the harbour was begun by the Pisans in 1152 to control the gulf, captured by the Genoese in 1256, and rebuilt in its present pentagonal form through the 14th and 15th centuries; it now holds a paleontology museum with Jurassic dinosaur tracks recovered from the local sandstone.

Shelley lived at a house in nearby San Terenzo in 1822, he drowned that summer sailing from Livorno, and Byron swam across the bay from Portovenere on his way to visit him. Beyond the historic harbour the commune stretches south past a colourful frazione perched on a rocky promontory above the sea, a member of the Borghi più belli d'Italia network in its own right; a coastal trail links the two through olive terraces and pine woods.

The town beach holds a Bandiera Blu and the harbour fills with sailing dinghies all summer. Upper fortress and lower water, working harbour and outlying fishing hamlet: the whole gulf edge here reads as one address that two poets happened to share, and the parts of the commune as its castle, its beach, and its outpost on the rocks.

Il Fico trentacareghe, La Barca have been named by a guide.

What to see in Lerici

• Castello di Lerici. Begun by the Pisans in 1152, captured by Genoa in 1256, rebuilt in its present form in the 14th-15th centuries. The pentagonal walls still hold the harbour under them, and the paleontology museum inside keeps the Jurassic tracks pulled from the local sandstone.
• Bay of Poets / Casa Magni. The Casa Magni at San Terenzo, a Lerici frazione, was Shelley's residence in 1822, the year he drowned in the bay. The house still stands on the shore that gave the Bay of Poets its name.
• Tellaro. Pastel-coloured fishing frazione clinging to a rocky promontory at the southern edge of the bay. Linked to Lerici by the coastal Castelnuovo trail.

How to get to Lerici

Pisa is roughly 61 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Lerici

Sestri Levante

Why visit Sestri Levante

Sestri Levante sits at the head of the Tigullio gulf, forty kilometers southeast of Genova, on a former island the Gromolo river silted into a peninsula by the eighteenth century. Roman Segesta Tigullorum was the predecessor; the town joined the Republic of Genova in 1133.

The peninsula splits the coast into two bays that face different ways and carry different names. To the north lies the long beach known as the Bay of Fables, named by a television host in a 1950s broadcast for the Danish writer who stayed here in 1833.

To the south lies the smaller, quieter bay, named by a Ligurian poet in 1919. Between them, on the high ground of the peninsula, stands the old watchtower where an inventor ran some of his most advanced shortwave radio work, work significant enough that the Navy renamed the gulf itself for him.

A town this small holds a beach with a literary name, a bay with a poet's name, and a headland with an engineer's name, three separate claims to attention pressed into one stretch of coast shaped by a silted river.

Pasticcerie Rossignotti, Rezzano Cucina e Vino, Baia del Silenzio and 4 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Sestri Levante

• Baia del Silenzio. Smaller southern bay enclosed by colorful seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses, named by poet Giovanni Descalzo in 1919.
• Baia delle Favole. Long northern beach and the Bandiera Blu stretch of the town, its name recalling Hans Christian Andersen, who looked out over the water from his inn.
• Torre Marconi. Old watchtower on the heights of the peninsula where Guglielmo Marconi carried out shortwave radio experiments in 1933 and 1934.

How to get to Sestri Levante

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 44 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Sestri Levante

Sarzana

Why visit Sarzana

Sarzana sits on the Magra plain at the Liguria-Tuscany border, eighty kilometers from Parma and thirteen from the sea at Portovenere. The town inherited the episcopal seat of Luni in 1204, when Pope Innocent III moved it here away from the malarial plain, and the cathedral built for that new seat still anchors the centro storico.

The walled center keeps its grid plan, with Via Mazzini and the cathedral square running through it and the Palazzo Roderio still doing duty as the town hall. Above the town, on a ridge, a second fortress with a triangular plan looks down on the plain and the older one below.

A future pope was born here in 1397. Between the hill fortress from the fourteenth century, the Renaissance rebuilding of the lower cittadella, and a cathedral that changed hands with a diocese, the town's layout reads as a record of who controlled the Magra plain and when.

Pasticceria Gemmi il Loggiato, Il Cardinale Vino e Cucina, Piccolo Ristorante and 1 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Sarzana

• Fortezza Firmafede. The fortress replaced a medieval cittadella on the same ground. Giuliano da Sangallo's plan survives largely intact, with the bulk and angles of the walls still readable from the approach into town.
• Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Late Gothic Tuscan cathedral, elevated to minor basilica in 1947. A cardinal born in the town, half-brother to a native-born pope, left his mark on the later additions.
• Croce di Mastro Guglielmo. The cross hangs inside the cathedral it has occupied since the seat moved here. Signed by its maker, it is the object the town's Romanesque reputation rests on.

How to get to Sarzana

There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Pisa is roughly 54 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Sarzana

Loano

Why visit Loano

Loano lies sixty kilometers southwest of Genova, at the foot of the arc of mountains that shelters it from inland weather. The town was an imperial fief of the Doria family from the thirteenth century, and the family financed the major public buildings still in use today: the palace at the centro's heart, the loggia beside it where civic business was once conducted, and, indirectly, the church that stands nearer the harbor, built for the town's seafarers and still holding their votive offerings of brigantines and barques.

The old centro, with its palace, loggia and church, sits inland of the modern marina and the two kilometers of beach that run east from it. The mountain at Loano's back and the harbor at its front mark the two poles the town has always worked between: the Doria who governed from the hill and the sailors who prayed by the water.

Bagatto have been named by a guide.

What to see in Loano

• Palazzo Doria. Considered one of the most representative civil Renaissance palaces in Liguria, its rooms now house the town's administrative offices, and the mosaic floor remains open to view on the main level.
• Chiesa di Sant'Agostino. Founded 1582 by Zenobia Del Carretto, rebuilt 1588-98; called the Madonnetta, the seafarers' church, with votive ship models inside.
• Marina di Loano. The Yachting Pages ranking sits alongside a working harbor east of the centro, with the beach running two kilometers of sand and gravel toward it.

How to get to Loano

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 76 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Loano

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.

Ai Torchi, Muraglia - Conchiglia d'Oro, Rosita and 2 more have been named by a guide.

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

Lavagna

Why visit Lavagna

Lavagna sits at sea level on the eastern Tigullio, thirty-five kilometers southeast of Genova. The slate quarried from the San Giacomo mountains behind the town roofed the Genovese palazzi and lined the schoolrooms of half of Italy, which is why the Italian word for chalkboard is also lavagna.

Around the year 1000 the Counts of Lavagna held this territory, and the family that descended from them, the Fieschi, rose from it to produce two popes. The frazione of San Salvatore sits above the main town, holding the basilica that one of those popes ordered built in bands of white marble and slate.

Down at sea level, the old center folds around the staircase and square where, on 14 August, the town reenacts a thirteenth-century wedding with the Torta dei Fieschi, a giant cake carried out to the crowd. The beach holds Bandiera Blu at the opposite edge of town, near the port.

A town built on a stone that traveled far beyond it, and on a family that did the same.

Impronta d'Acqua, Raieü, Aria and 1 more have been named by a guide.

What to see in Lavagna

• Basilica di Santo Stefano. Parish church rebuilt over a sixth-century foundation, crowning the main square at the top of a wide staircase where the annual cake pageant begins its procession.
• Basilica di San Salvatore dei Fieschi. Thirteenth-century basilica in the frazione of San Salvatore, ordered by Pope Innocent IV in 1244, façade in alternating bands of white marble and local slate.
• Spiaggia di Lavagna. Long Bandiera Blu beach on the Tigullio, with one of the largest tourist ports in northern Italy at the western end.

How to get to Lavagna

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 44 minutes away by road.

Everything we know about Lavagna