The best towns you can reach by train within 45 minutes of Genoa
Liguria is built for the train. The line clings to the coast, ducking through headland tunnels and emerging over shingle beaches, harbours 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 towards Savona and east towards the Golfo del Tigullio there are stations where the platform opens onto a harbour 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 11 communes we have mapped in a 45-minute drive of Genoa, 9 qualify as towns you can reach by train: we confirmed a station you can arrive at. The smallest, Campo Ligure, has 2,777 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The best coastal towns within 45 minutes of Genoa and The best olive oil towns within 45 minutes of Genoa.
Campo Ligure
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 metres tall and six across.
The first filigree workshop opened in 1884. Within a generation Campo Ligure had become the national centre for the craft, fine gold and silver threads twisted with pliers called bruscelle and welded under a torch.
It remains the only working filigree centre 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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Campo Ligure
- Castello Spinola. Twelfth and thirteenth-century hexagonal fortress on the hill above the village, cylindrical tower 22 metres 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
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 41 minutes away by road.
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-metre elevation keeps evenings cool.
Bogliasco
Why visit Bogliasco
Bogliasco sits 15 kilometers east of Genoa on the Riviera di Levante, where the Bogliasco torrent meets the sea between two rocky headlands. Archaeological surveys on the slopes of Mount Cordona found stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic and Mesolithic, and Roman-era artefacts confirm that the corridor down from the Val Fontanabuona to the coast was a transit route for imperial troops.
The village's signature monument is the medieval bridge near the mouth of the torrent, traditionally called il ponte romano although the surviving structure is Romanesque, built in the 13th century and remodelled in the 17th. The historic centre tightens around the parish church of Natività di Maria Santissima — a baroque rebuild of an earlier Romanesque oratory — and a network of stepped alleys (creuze) climbing into the olive terraces above.
The cove below is small, pebbled, and clear enough that the village's ASD Bogliasco club has produced multiple Italian national water polo and synchronised swimming champions. The Genoa metropolitan train brings Bogliasco into Liguria's commuter belt — twenty minutes from Brignole — which is why the pastel houses are kept lived-in rather than picture-postcard.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
What to see in Bogliasco
- Ponte medievale (il "ponte romano"). 13th-century Romanesque stone bridge near the mouth of the Bogliasco torrent, remodelled in the 17th century. Named romano colloquially but architecturally Romanesque.
- Chiesa della Natività di Maria Santissima. Baroque parish church rebuilt on the footprint of an earlier Romanesque oratory, with a 17th-century facade overlooking the seafront.
- Spiaggia di Bogliasco. Small pebbled cove tucked between two rocky points, the home beach of the ASD Bogliasco water polo and synchronised swimming clubs.
How to get to Bogliasco
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 16 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through October is the open season: warm coastal days, calm sea by late spring, and the cove gets busy from June through August. The water-polo club's home season runs October through April for those who plan a fixture around the visit. November through March is quiet — the seafront stays open and the train still runs every fifteen minutes — but most of the small terraces and ice-cream shops close until Easter.
Santa Margherita Ligure
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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
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.
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.
Camogli
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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
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 33 minutes away by road.
✷ 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. Sagra Del Pesce falls in May.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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.
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. Sagra dei Testaieu e Asado a Montedomenico falls in August.
Chiavari
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 centre.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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
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 32 minutes away by road.
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.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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.
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. Mangialonga Nel Golfo Paradiso falls in April.
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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.
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. La Torta dei Fieschi falls in August.
Varazze
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.
We confirmed you can reach this one by train.
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
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 45 minutes away by road.
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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