Themed picks · Genoa · Coast
10 fishing villages near Genoa
Ten villages: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. A square meter runs from €2,100 in Recco to €6,700 in Santa Margherita Ligure.
10 comuni · within 90 minutes of Genoa · drive times by road from the city center
Liguria is two coasts that meet at Genoa: the Riviera di Ponente running west toward France and the Riviera di Levante running east toward La Spezia. Both are working fishing coasts, with daily boats out of nearly every harbor town, but they have different rhythms and different fish. The west catches more anchovies (the famous Monterosso variety actually comes from the east, confusingly) and more swordfish. The east catches more octopus, scampi, and the small flat fish that go into the local cappon magro.
Genoa is the right base because it sits at the joint and the coastal motorway (A10 west, A12 east) plus the regional rail line put every Ligurian fishing comune inside 90 minutes. Both Rivieras are walkable along their old via Aurelia at the harbor level, and most of the fishing villages have kept the layout: church, piazza, harbor, single row of houses behind. The famous five (Cinque Terre) are part of this picture but not the only part. Camogli, Boccadasse, Sori on the east; Noli, Varigotti, Cervo on the west. All of them work as day trips.
We ranked the villages by their Bandiera Blu, Borghi più belli and Bandiera Arancione flags and by how close they are, which tips the list east, to the Levante between Bogliasco and Framura, with Celle Ligure and Noli on the Ponente. Drive times are by road from the center of Genoa; for several entries the regional rail is faster and we flag that on the per-town page.
The towns
1Savona · Liguria · 40 min from Genoa
Celle Ligure
Best for a long lunch. A food guide lists Meta Ristorante here.
homes €3,200 to €5,300 a m² in the center · 4,795 people
A Riviera di Ponente beach town with kilns firing since the 1600s.
Working kilns since the seventeenth century, recognized as a Città della Ceramica of ancient tradition in 2019.
Working Ligurian harbor with the Bandiera Blu water flag.
The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,300 a m².
2Genova · Liguria · 25 min from Genoa
Recco
Best for everyday life on foot. Nine of the ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.
homes €2,100 to €3,100 a m² in the center · 9,279 people
A coastal town rebuilt from 90 percent destruction in 1943, known for IGP cheese focaccia and Pro Recco water polo.
Two thin sheets of unleavened dough sealing fresh stracchino; IGP since 2012, made only in Recco, Avegno, Sori and Camogli.
3Genova · Liguria · 16 min from Genoa
Bogliasco
Best for a trip without a car. The train stops in the commune.
homes €2,650 to €3,900 a m² in the center · 4,298 people
A fishing village on the Riviera di Levante just east of Genoa, built around a 13th-century stone bridge over the Bogliasco torrent and a tight grid of pastel-coloured houses opening onto a pebble cove.
The 13th-century "Roman" bridge over the Bogliasco torrent: actually Romanesque, but the name has stuck for centuries.
Working Ligurian harbor.
- 4
Genova · Liguria · 32 min from Genoa
Chiavari
Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.
homes €2,500 to €3,700 a m² in the center · 27,452 people
The Tigullio capital between Portofino and the Cinque Terre, a 27,000-person Genoese trading town built around a thirteenth-century grid of porticoed streets.
Light-frame bentwood chair invented in 1807 by Giuseppe Gaetano Descalzi, exported worldwide, the chair Napoleon ordered for the Tuileries.
5Genova · Liguria · 33 min from Genoa
Camogli
Best for a swim. The comune's beach holds a Blue Flag.
homes €4,100 to €6,100 a m² in the center · 4,882 people
A fishing village on the Golfo Paradiso whose nineteenth-century fleet of a thousand white sails made it Italy's third maritime power in the Mediterranean.
The nineteenth-century merchant-sailing fleet that made Camogli Italy's third maritime power in the Mediterranean.
The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €6,100 a m².
6Genova · Liguria · 40 min from Genoa
Santa Margherita Ligure
Best for everyday life on foot. Eight of the ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.
homes €3,200 to €6,700 a m² in the center · 8,323 people
The Tigullio town that kept its fishing port while the world drove past on the way to Portofino two kilometers further.
Working fishing harbor that kept its boats and net sheds alongside the marina, unusual on this stretch of coast.
The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €6,700 a m².
7Genova · Liguria · 57 min from Genoa
Moneglia
Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.
homes €3,200 to €4,700 a m² in the center · 2,486 people
A bay on the Riviera di Levante, closed by two wooded headlands.
Sixteenth-century Genoese painter born here in 1527, whose Adoration of the Magi still hangs in the Chiesa di San Giorgio.
8Savona · Liguria · 58 min from Genoa
Noli
Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.
homes €3,900 to €5,800 a m² in the center · 2,425 people
The fifth Italian maritime republic from 1192 to 1797, a walled coastal town with the Romanesque basilica of San Paragorio outside its gates.
Independent from 1192 to 1797, the smallest of the four mainland Italian maritime republics, allied to Genoa.
The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,800 a m².
9La Spezia · Liguria · 59 min from Genoa
Framura
Best for a small town. 553 people live here.
homes €2,650 to €3,900 a m² in the center · 553 people
Five hamlets between sea level and 300 meters on the Riviera di Levante, with Byzantine watchtowers built against Saracen incursions.
Anzo, Setta, Ravecca, Costa and Castagnola, spread between sea level and 300 meters on the same hillside.
The catch: It has lost 15% of its people since 2015.
10Genova · Liguria · 44 min from Genoa
Lavagna
Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.
homes €2,300 to €3,400 a m² in the center · 12,367 people
The Tigullio town that gave its name to slate, and its counts to a line of popes.
The dark slate of the San Giacomo mountains, source of the Italian word lavagna for chalkboard and roofing material across Genova.
We write about towns like these one town at a time, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, from Turin.
Why Genoa is the base
Genoa is Italy's oldest port city, a working harbor that still moves more freight than any other on the Tyrrhenian, and a dense, layered city center (the largest historic medieval center in Europe by area) that rewards two or three days of walking before you start day-tripping. The fish in the central market (Mercato Orientale, plus the smaller Sori and Boccadasse markets) comes in from the same harbors you visit on the trips out. Closing the loop on a Ligurian cappon magro in the city after a morning in the village it came from is the right way to do this trip.
When to go
April through June and September through October. The water is swimmable from June, the bracing wind picks up by mid-September. Avoid the second half of July and all of August, when the Cinque Terre and the Portofino circuit get overcrowded. November through March is the off-season for the resort towns but the fishing villages stay open and the food (heavier, with the autumn anchovies and the first chestnuts) is at its register.
Questions people ask
- What is the closest fishing village to Genoa?
- Boccadasse, technically inside Genoa's metropolitan boundary on its eastern edge. The harbor is the size of a piazza; it takes 25 minutes by foot or 10 by bus from the city center. The Saturday morning fish market still operates on the steps above the beach.
- Are the Cinque Terre worth visiting?
- Yes, but go in shoulder season (April, May, September, October) and stay at least one night to walk the path between villages early in the morning before the day-trip crowds arrive. The five villages are Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore.
- Which side of the Riviera is quieter?
- The Riviera di Ponente west of Genoa. Less famous, less photographed, with a string of medieval fishing villages (Noli, Varigotti, Cervo, Laigueglia) that have stayed working harbors rather than tourist towns. The motorway and the via Aurelia thread them together.
- Can I take a day trip to a Ligurian fishing village by train?
- Yes. The Genova-La Spezia and Genova-Ventimiglia regional lines stop at almost every harbor town on both Rivieras. Camogli, Santa Margherita, Sestri Levante, Bonassola, Levanto, Vernazza, Riomaggiore east; Cogoleto, Varazze, Albenga, Cervo, Diano Marina west.
How we picked these · We took every Ligurian town in our catalogue within 90 minutes of Genoa by car (38 of them), kept the 30 on the coast, and ranked them by Bandiera Blu, Borghi più belli and Bandiera Arancione and by how close they are.
