The 6 best towns you can reach by train that sit inside a nature park in Liguria
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Liguria is narrow enough that the mountains and the water are rarely more than a short climb apart. Behind the beach huts and the slate roofs sit regional parks of Aleppo pine, holm oak, chestnut and broom, threaded with mule tracks that were carrying salt and oil long before anyone came here to swim. In spring the maquis smells of rosemary and cistus, and in autumn the inland valleys turn to chestnut flour, mushrooms and heavy focaccia eaten standing up. The railway runs the length of the coast and up a couple of the valleys, which means the walking starts where the platform ends.
The Cinque Terre absorbed this idea first and has been paying for it ever since. Its footpaths are ticketed, its trains are full from Easter to October, and the villages that made the coastal park famous now manage crowds as a full-time occupation. It is a fine landscape and the terraces are remarkable, but the queue for the path to Vernazza is not the reason anyone came to Liguria.
The same rock, the same pines and the same trail markers carry on for the rest of the region, into the Beigua park above the western beaches, the Portofino headland, the Antola hills and the Magra valley near the Tuscan border. Fewer people go, the paths are not ticketed, and the trains still stop. These are the towns on that list.
Of the 54 communes we have mapped in Liguria, 6 qualify as towns you can reach by train inside a nature park: we have confirmed each is reachable without a car, and each sits inside a regional nature park. The smallest, Campo Ligure, has 2,777 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best coastal towns inside a nature park in Liguria and The best towns inside a nature park that eat well in Liguria.
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.
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. Genova is about 41 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
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-meter elevation keeps evenings cool.
Why visit Santa Margherita Ligure
Santa Margherita Ligure sits on the inner curve of the Tigullio gulf, 35 kilometers southeast of Genova, between Camogli and Portofino. The two medieval burghs of Pescino and Corte were unified in 1813 under Napoleonic rule as Porto Napoleone, then renamed when the Kingdom of Sardinia took the coast back in 1815.
Genoese architecture survived the merger: trompe-l'oeil facades on the seafront, the 1658 Basilica of Santa Margherita d'Antiochia with its baroque interior of marble and crystal, the 1550 castle built against North African corsair raids by the architect who built Rapallo's. Villa Durazzo, raised in 1678 as a Genoese summer residence, holds three hectares of terraced gardens above the harbor.
The port still works fishing boats alongside the yachts. Most day-trippers continue to Portofino.
The ones who stop find a town that uses its seafront rather than performing it.
What to see in Santa Margherita Ligure
- Basilica di Santa Margherita d'Antiochia. Baroque parish basilica from 1658, crystal chandeliers and gilded statuary, dominating Piazza Caprera in the centro storico.
- Villa Durazzo-Centurione. Genoese summer villa from 1678 with frescoed Piano Nobile apartments and a three-hectare terraced park above the Tigullio gulf.
- Castello di Santa Margherita Ligure. Coastal fort raised by the Republic of Genoa in 1550 against Saracen and Barbary raids, designed by the architect of Rapallo's castle.
How to get to Santa Margherita Ligure
It has its own railway station. Genova is about 40 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the strongest months. The sea is warm enough from late May, the Tigullio quiets after September, and Villa Durazzo's gardens are at their best in shoulder season. July and August fill the seafront, the Portofino ferries run packed, and the inland streets keep a few degrees of shade.
Why visit Arenzano
Arenzano sits in a bay at the foot of Capo San Martino on the Riviera di Ponente, twenty kilometers west of Genova. The name covers two different territories that share a boundary rather than a character: a strip of seafront and promenade at sea level, and behind it, rising fast, the two-thirds of the commune that belongs to the mountain park, climbing to peaks above a thousand meters within an hour of the shore.
The town itself gathers between the two, with the church and the villa a short walk apart near the water, and the trailhead sitting well above both, at 758 meters, as the point where the coastal town ends and the climb into the plateau begins. Arenzano reached the Borgo dei Borghi RAI final, which brought enough recognition to fill August weekends but not enough to make the rest of the year hard.
What holds the place together is that proximity: a pilgrimage site, a seat of government in a park, a sandy bay and an alpine plateau all sit within the same short walk of each other, so the town reads less as a single attraction than as a set of unrelated destinations that happen to share an address.
What to see in Arenzano
- Santuario di Gesù Bambino di Praga. The sanctuary draws pilgrims year-round; the interior holds the statue of the Infant of Prague at the center of the devotion it gave the town.
- Villa Negrotto Cambiaso. The villa's park holds palm and cedar groves, a small aviary and a glasshouse, alongside the offices it now houses.
- Parco naturale regionale del Beigua. Monte Reixa rises to 1,183 meters within the park, reached by a network of trails that begin at sea level.
How to get to Arenzano
It has its own railway station. Genova is about 49 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
Our tip
April through June is the cleanest stretch for combining the Beigua trails with sea swimming, before the heat. July and August fill the bay with Genovesi day-trippers and weekend cars on the via Aurelia; the centro storico can be hard to park. September empties out and stays warm enough to swim into October.
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
It has its own railway station. Genova is about 33 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
✷ We have written about Camogli
“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 Camogli →Tigullio Roadtrip | Four Versions of the Same Liguria
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.
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.
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
It has its own railway station. Pisa is about 54 min away by road. The full route from Pisa.
✷ We have written about Sarzana
“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 Sarzana →Magra Delta Roadtrip | A Tagine, a Lighthouse, and a Dead Roman City
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the strongest months for the centro storico, with the Festival della Mente filling the squares at the end of August. July and August are hot on the Magra plain, often 32 to 35 degrees; the Fortezza Firmafede holds courtyard concerts in the evenings. The town stays open year-round because it is a working provincial center of 21,650 residents, with daily markets and trains to La Spezia, Pisa, and Parma.
Why visit Varazze
Varazze sits between Mount Beigua and the sea, 30 kilometers west of Genova in the Riviera di Ponente. The town grew around the Roman station of Ad Navalia and became the main port of the marquisate of Bosco, disputed for centuries between Savona and Genova because of its shipyards.
Jacopo da Varagine was born here around 1228 in the Casanova district. As a Dominican friar and later archbishop of Genova, he compiled the Legenda Aurea, a Latin collection of saint biographies that survived in roughly 1,400 manuscript codices through the Middle Ages, second only to the Bible in circulation.
The parish Collegiate Church of Sant'Ambrogio holds a panel by Luca Cambiaso, one of the greatest Ligurian painters of the sixteenth century. Mount Beigua rises to 1,287 meters at the town's back.
The economy still works shipyards, yachting and tourism in roughly that order.
What to see in Varazze
- Chiesa Collegiata di Sant'Ambrogio. Parish collegiate church with Romanesque-Gothic three-mullioned bell tower, Baroque façade, polyptych by Giovanni Barbagelata and a panel by Luca Cambiaso.
- Parco Naturale del Beigua. UNESCO Geopark covering Mount Beigua at 1,287 meters, the highest peak in the range, with trails connecting the coast to the entroterra.
- Centro storico. Medieval grid behind the shipyards with surviving sections of the old town walls and the Casanova district where Jacopo da Varagine was born.
How to get to Varazze
It has its own railway station. Genova is about 45 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the best months on the Varazze coast. Mount Beigua shelters the town from north winds, so the climate stays mild well into autumn. July and August are warm and crowded, with the beaches filling and the Beigua trails busy.
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