The 10 best towns you can reach by train within 45 minutes of Genoa
Ten towns: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. In Genoa's center a square meter costs €1,750 to €3,400; here it starts at €680, in Campo Ligure.
We've written about 4 of these 10. From the 1,000 towns picked by Peter Benei.
92 towns written about, 908 to go. Follow along, free: Subscribe on Substack
Liguria is built for the train. The line clings to the coast, ducking through headland tunnels and emerging over shingle beaches, harbors stacked with painted houses and terraces of olive and lemon cut into the slate hills behind. Getting off at the right station puts you within walking distance of focaccia col formaggio still warm from the oven, anchovies from the morning boats, and a pesto made with the small sweet basil that grows on this coast. Late spring and September are the good months, when the water is warm and the platforms are not full of beach bags. Inland, past the Ponente coast, the valleys turn to stone and chestnut and the summer heat lifts.
The obvious answer to a day out of Genoa is the Cinque Terre, and the train makes it easy, which is exactly the problem. Riomaggiore, Manarola and the rest absorb enormous numbers of visitors in season, and the regional service between them can be standing room only from mid-morning. It is a fine landscape and a poor way to spend a morning if you dislike queueing for a footpath. The coast does not become less beautiful the moment you stop heading that far along it.
The same railway, the same cliffs, the same anchovies and slate carry on in both directions much closer to the city. West toward Savona and east toward the Golfo del Tigullio there are stations where the platform opens onto a harbor rather than a ticket barrier queue, and one line runs inland into the Valle Stura where the houses are stone and the summers are cooler. Every town here has a station we have confirmed, which means no hire car, no parking, and no coastal road in August. Fewer people get off at these stops.
Of the 13 communes we have mapped in a 45-minute drive of Genoa, 12 qualify as towns you can reach by train: we confirmed a station you can arrive at. This list is 10 of them. The smallest, Campo Ligure, has 2,796 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best coastal towns within 45 minutes of Genoa and The best towns that eat well within 45 minutes of Genoa.
All the towns within a day trip: day trips from Genoa.
1. 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.
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.
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.
2. Celle Ligure
Best for a long lunch. A food guide lists Meta Ristorante here.
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.
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.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months on this stretch of the Ponente. The sea warms enough for swimming by late May. July and August are full: the lungomare slows, the beach establishments fill with weekenders from Torino, and the Aurelia stays clogged from Albisola to Varazze on Friday afternoons.
3. Recco
Best for everyday life on foot. Nine of the ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.
25 min from Genoa · homes €2,100 to €3,100 a m² in the center · 9,279 people
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.
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
It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 25 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the strongest months on the Golfo Paradiso, with mild water and the fewest day-trippers from Genova. The Sagra della Focaccia col Formaggio in the last week of May is the date that fills the seafront. July and August are warm, often 28 to 30 degrees, and the beaches fill on weekends with Genovesi on the train line.
4. Camogli
Best for a day out from Genoa. It is 33 min by car.
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.
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.
✷ 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.
5. Sestri Levante
Best for a wine weekend. It belongs to the national association of wine towns.
44 min from Genoa · homes €3,800 to €6,200 a m² in the center · 17,240 people
Written about. No. 28. Read the letter →
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.
The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €6,200 a m².
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
It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 44 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months on the Tigullio. The sea warms enough for swimming by late May. The Premio Andersen children's literature festival runs in June with author events across the town.
6. Chiavari
Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.
32 min from Genoa · homes €2,500 to €3,700 a m² in the center · 27,452 people
Written about. No. 25. Read the letter →
Why visit Chiavari
Chiavari sits on the Riviera di Levante where the Entella meets the Gulf of Tigullio, thirty kilometers east of Genoa. A pre-Roman necropolis from the eighth and seventh centuries BC has been excavated under the center.
Genoa raised a castle here in 1147 and laid out the medieval town as a grid of porticoed streets, both sides of the carruggio continuous under Gothic columns, the most complete thirteenth-century Genoese commercial plan in Liguria. The Chiavari family produced two doges of the Republic.
In 1801 Napoleon made the city the capital of the Apennines department, one of three administrative units that absorbed Liguria into the French Empire. The Cattedrale di Nostra Signora dell'Orto was built 1613-1633 after a Marian apparition on 2 July 1610 to a local citizen, Sebastiano Descalzo; the neoclassical marble portico modelled on the Pantheon went up in 1841 as a vow for survival from cholera.
Chiavari became a diocese in 1892 and the church a minor basilica in 1904. Slate work, silk weaving and the eponymous Chiavari chair are still made in town.
What to see in Chiavari
- Cattedrale di Nostra Signora dell'Orto. Built 1613-1633 after a Marian apparition in 1610, neoclassical Pantheon-style portico added 1841 as a cholera vow, minor basilica from 1904.
- Caruggio porticato. Thirteenth-century medieval commercial street, both sides continuous under Gothic-columned porticoes, the most intact Genoese plan in Liguria.
- Castello di Chiavari. Genoese fortress built in 1147 above the original town, irregular polygonal walls, partly absorbed into later residential buildings.
How to get to Chiavari
It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 32 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
Our tip
April through June and September to October are the working months: Bandiera Blu beach swimmable from late May, the seafront walk to Lavagna open in any weather, evenings on Piazza Mazzini under 25 degrees. The Sagra del Pesce in Lavagna next door and the Chiavari book festival in late September draw weekend crowds. July and August fill the lungomare with Milanese and Genovese families, and accommodation runs at three times shoulder rates.
7. Rapallo
Best for a day out from Genoa. It is 30 min by car.
30 min from Genoa · homes €1,750 to €3,500 a m² in the center · 29,496 people
Written about. No. 27. Read the letter →
Why visit Rapallo
Rapallo sits on the Tigullio gulf 25 kilometers southeast of Genova, between Portofino and Chiavari. The first settlement dates from the eighth century BC; the city name appears in a document of 964, and the Podestà was created in 1203.
Rapallo passed to Genoese control in 1229 and stayed under the Republic until the Napoleonic wars. The Castello sul Mare, built mid-sixteenth century after a raid by the corsair Dragut, is the symbol of the town and one of the few coastal forts built on the water rather than the cliff.
Three diplomatic meetings gave Rapallo its modern name in Europe, among them the 1920 Italo-Yugoslav treaty: the 1917 inter-Allied conference after Caporetto, which created the Versailles war council, and the 1922 German-Soviet treaty signed during the Genoa conference, restoring relations between the two pariah powers after Versailles. The Sanctuary of Montallegro above the town marks an apparition reported in 1557.
Bobbin lace, the local craft, runs back through the same period.
What to see in Rapallo
- Castello sul Mare. Sixteenth-century coastal fort built on a small islet at the harbor entrance after corsair Dragut's raid; the town's symbol and part of the Tigullio defensive system.
- Santuario di Nostra Signora di Montallegro. Hilltop sanctuary at 612 meters on Monte Letho, marking the 1557 Marian apparition, reached by funicular or footpath.
- Monastero di Valle Christi. Cistercian monastery founded 1204, ruined Gothic complex on the edge of the modern town, surviving apse and bell tower.
How to get to Rapallo
It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 30 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the best months on the Tigullio. The Montallegro funicular runs through the year, the lace museum keeps regular hours, and the seafront is walkable without midsummer crowds. July and August fill the marina and the lungomare; the Castello sul Mare is photographed from every angle.
8. Arenzano
Best for everyday life on foot. All ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.
31 min from Genoa · homes €2,400 to €4,100 a m² in the center · 11,156 people
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. Genoa is about 31 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.
9. Lavagna
Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.
44 min from Genoa · homes €2,300 to €3,400 a m² in the center · 12,367 people
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.
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
It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 44 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the dry months on the Tigullio. The beach water warms enough for swimming by late May. The 14 August Torta dei Fieschi is the central event of the summer: period costumes, procession from the Basilica di San Salvatore down to Piazza Marconi, and a giant cake distributed to anyone who matches a paired ticket.
10. Varazze
Best for a swim. The comune's beach holds a Blue Flag.
45 min from Genoa · homes €3,000 to €6,000 a m² in the center · 12,447 people
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.
The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €6,000 a m².
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. Genoa 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.
If you only pick one
Which town is yours
One town for each kind of trip, and the reason in a line.
Without a car
Rapallo
The train stops in the commune, so you can arrive and leave without a car.
For everyday life on foot
Arenzano
All ten everyday services we look for, from a grocer to a pharmacy, are on the map within 500 meters of the center.
For a small town
Campo Ligure
2,796 people, the smallest town on this list.
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