Sassello

Sassello sits on the northern flank of the Ligurian Apennines, inside a UNESCO Global Geopark that stretches between Genova and Savona. The old village divides into two bastie: the Bastia Soprana, dating to the twelfth century, and the Bastia Sottana, founded by the Doria in the fifteenth, the two halves joined by stone bridges over the Sansobbia stream and threaded with frescoed palaces and baroque churches. Most visitors arrive from Savona, thirty kilometers south, or from Genova, thirty-five east.

The biscuit that carries the town's name past its own borders began in an ordinary kitchen: Geltrude Rossi ran an inn with a kitchen in the centro, and in 1860 started baking small almond biscuits she eventually named amaretti. By 1892 they had a bronze medal at the Columbian celebrations; by 1911, gold in Paris. The Rossi and Virginia families still make them, and the town holds the trademark on amaretti morbidi di Sassello.

A hill town shaped by a river split and a fifteenth-century feudal addition has, almost as an aside, given its name to something baked in a kitchen and sent to Paris. The geography explains the two halves of the village; the biscuit explains why the name travels.