Region
Liguria
The towns
54 of 54 towns
54 of 54 towns
- Written about. No. 57.
Brugnato
Province: La Spezia
The medieval ecclesiastical capital of an inland Ligurian valley, seat of a diocese from 1133 to 1820, with a co-cathedral built over a Columban monastery.
- Written about. No. 56.
Vernazza
Province: La Spezia
The middle village of the coast, the only one with a natural harbor, buried under four meters of mud in October 2011.
- Written about. No. 55.
Riomaggiore
Province: La Spezia
The easternmost of the five villages, 1,287 people stacked above a fishing inlet, terraced vineyards climbing 250 meters straight off the sea.
- Written about. No. 54.
Monterosso al Mare
Province: La Spezia
The westernmost and largest of the five villages, where Eugenio Montale spent the childhood summers that became Ossi di seppia in 1925.
- Written about. No. 53.
Portovenere
Province: La Spezia
A Genoese fortress guards the western mouth of the Gulf of Poets, above the rock where a Roman temple to Venus once stood.
- Written about. No. 28.
Sestri Levante
Province: Genova
The Tigullio town of two bays, split by a peninsula where a river once silted an island to the shore.
- Written about. No. 27.
Rapallo
Province: Genova
The largest town on the Tigullio gulf, twice the location of treaties that redrew borders in postwar Europe.
- Written about. No. 26.
Portofino
Province: Genova
Three hundred and fifty-one residents, the smallest municipal territory in the metropolitan area, and the harbor every superyacht in the Mediterranean wants to anchor in.
- Written about. No. 25.
Chiavari
Province: Genova
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.
- Written about. No. 24.
Camogli
Province: Genova
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.
- Written about. No. 20.
Sarzana
Province: La Spezia
The unofficial capital of the Lunigiana on the Magra plain, birthplace of Pope Niccolò V.
- Written about. No. 19.
Castelnuovo Magra
Province: La Spezia
A ridge village on the Liguria-Tuscany border where a marquisate treaty ended decades of conflict with the bishops of Luni.
- Written about. No. 18.
Ameglia
Province: La Spezia
A hilltop borgo at 89 meters above the mouth of the Magra, the Lunigiana edge of Liguria where the river meets the Gulf of Poets.
- Written about. No. 17.
Lerici
Province: La Spezia
A fishing harbor under a Pisan-Genoese castle, with the frazione of Tellaro hanging over the rocks at the commune's southern edge.
Andora
Province: Savona
A Riviera town with two faces, two kilometers of sandy beach on the Aurelia and a ruined twelfth-century castle hidden on a hill behind it.
Apricale
Province: Imperia
A medieval hill village in the Nervia Valley, named for the Latin apricus, sunny, with a tenth-century castle shaped like a lizard on the rock.
Arenzano
Province: Genova
A coastal town twenty kilometers west of Genova where two-thirds of the territory climbs into the Parco del Beigua and peaks above a thousand meters.
Badalucco
Province: Imperia
A medieval village wrapped in a bend of the Argentina torrent, with murals on its caruggi and a Slow Food bean on its terraces.
Bogliasco
Province: Genova
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.
Borgio Verezzi
Province: Savona
Two villages joined under one comune in 1933: Borgio on the coast below, Verezzi on the pink-stone hill above.
Campo Ligure
Province: Genova
A Spinola borgo at 342 meters in the Stura valley north of Genova, the last working center for gold and silver filigree in Italy.
Castelvecchio di Rocca Barbena
Province: Savona
A stone village of 126 residents at 420 meters, built into the southern foot of a 1,142-meter limestone outcrop.
Celle Ligure
Province: Savona
A Riviera di Ponente beach town with kilns firing since the 1600s.
Ceriana
Province: Imperia
A medieval village at 369 meters above the Valle Armea, inland from Sanremo, built on the Roman castrum that gave it its name.
Cervo
Province: Imperia
A hilltop village on the Riviera di Ponente built by coral fishermen, named for the Roman mansio on the Via Julia Augusta.
Cipressa
Province: Imperia
A ridgeline village at 232 meters above the Riviera dei Fiori, the climb that decides the final selection of a famous cycling race and a sixteenth-century Saracen-defence tower as its summit.
Deiva Marina
Province: La Spezia
A Riviera di Levante seaside commune reachable by sea only after the 1874 railway.
Diano
Province: Imperia
A twin destination on the Riviera dei Fiori: a medieval hilltop borgo above and a beach resort below, sharing one bay and one olive valley.
Dolceacqua
Province: Imperia
A two-banked medieval village split by a single-arch bridge from 1400, the one Monet came to paint in 1884.
Finale Ligure
Province: Savona
Three boroughs on the Gulf of Genoa, a walled inland seat set back from two coastal quarters below a karst limestone circuit.
Framura
Province: La Spezia
Five hamlets between sea level and 300 meters on the Riviera di Levante, with Byzantine watchtowers built against Saracen incursions.
Laigueglia
Province: Savona
A former coral-fishing village on the Riviera di Ponente, with a curved Baroque parish church and a fishermen's grid of caruggi behind the beach.
Lavagna
Province: Genova
The Tigullio town that gave its name to slate, and its counts to a line of popes.
Levanto
Province: La Spezia
The sixth Cinque Terre, a beach town and Cittaslow at the gateway of the national park, with a surf break and a striped Gothic church.
Loano
Province: Savona
A Doria fief on the Savona coast where a Renaissance palace stands over a Roman mosaic, in the shadow of the mountain that shelters it.
Millesimo
Province: Savona
A fortified borgo at 429 meters, where Napoleon broke the Austro-Sardinian army in April 1796.
Moneglia
Province: Genova
A bay on the Riviera di Levante, closed by two wooded headlands.
Noli
Province: Savona
The fifth Italian maritime republic from 1192 to 1797, a walled coastal town with the Romanesque basilica of San Paragorio outside its gates.
Perinaldo
Province: Imperia
A ridge village at 572 meters, birthplace of Giovanni Domenico Cassini and home to a working astronomical observatory in his name.
Pietra Ligure
Province: Savona
A Riviera di Ponente town named after the rock castle above its center, known today for one of the largest triennial flower carpets in Europe.
Pieve di Teco
Province: Imperia
A planned market town founded in 1233 in the middle Arroscia valley, with porticoed Corso Ponzoni and one of the smallest theaters in Italy.
Recco
Province: Genova
A coastal town rebuilt from 90 percent destruction in 1943, known for IGP cheese focaccia and Pro Recco water polo.
Sanremo
Province: Imperia
The capital of the Italian Riviera dei Fiori: Belle Époque casino and palm-lined Lungomare on the seafront, a medieval labyrinth climbing the hill behind, and a year-round mild climate that built the original Northern European winter trade.
Santa Margherita Ligure
Province: Genova
The Tigullio town that kept its fishing port while the world drove past on the way to Portofino two kilometers further.
Santo Stefano d'Aveto
Province: Genova
Liguria's highest commune, set in the Ligurian-Emilian Apennines with a Malaspina-Doria castle and the region's only ski resort.
Sassello
Province: Savona
A baroque borgo at 381 meters in the Parco del Beigua, split by a stream and known for a soft almond biscuit invented in its own kitchens.
Savona
Province: Savona
A working port city with two Della Rovere popes, a Sistine Chapel of its own, and a fortress on the old town.
Seborga
Province: Imperia
A hilltop village at 517 meters above Bordighera that calls itself a principality, 284 residents, its own coins and stamps since 1963.
Taggia
Province: Imperia
The Argentina valley's medieval seat above the Riviera dei Fiori, the town that gave its name to the Taggiasca olive grown across western Liguria.
Toirano
Province: Savona
A medieval village at the mouth of the Val Varatella, four kilometers inland from Loano, with karst caves holding 14,000-year-old human footprints.
Triora
Province: Imperia
The witches' village at 776 meters in the upper Valle Argentina, where the Inquisition put around 200 women on trial between 1587 and 1589.
Varazze
Province: Savona
A Ligurian shipbuilding town whose thirteenth-century friar compiled the saint lives that became the most copied book in Europe after the Bible.
Varese Ligure
Province: La Spezia
The Val di Vara's medieval seat at 358 meters, the first European municipality with ISO 14001 certification, anchor of Italy's largest organic district.
Zuccarello
Province: Savona
A 279-person medieval borgo in the Neva valley above Albenga, founded by the Marquises of Clavesana in 1248, birthplace of Ilaria del Carretto.
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By landscape: Hill towns · Coastal towns
By designation: Borghi più belli d'Italia (28) · Bandiera Arancione (13) · Parco Regionale (15) · Città dell'Olio (14) · Parco Nazionale (4) · Bandiera Blu (21) · UNESCO (4) · Spighe Verdi (4) · Bandiera Lilla (9) · Geoparco UNESCO (4)