Cervo

Cervo sits on a hill that drops straight to the Riviera di Ponente, between Imperia and Albenga. The settlement began as a Roman roadhouse on the Via Julia Augusta and grew into a medieval fief of the Marchesi di Clavesana, loyal vassals of the Republic of Genoa. The sixteenth-century towers and ramparts that ring the upper village were built when Saracen incursions still threatened the coast, and the fortified high point where the marquis line once held power is now given over to a museum of the coral trade that shaped the town below.

The lower streets run down toward the church square, where the coral money that built the parish church also paid, centuries later, for the open-air stage where the summer concerts are heard. The two high points of the village, the castle above and the churchyard below, mark the two economies that built Cervo: a defensive fief guarding the coast, and a fishing community whose earnings from distant waters ended up carved into Baroque stone. What the hill preserves, in effect, is the record of both: a fortified lookout turned museum, and a merchant church turned concert hall.