Bandiera Blu
Bandiera Blu in Liguria
21 towns
Liguria holds 21 Bandiera Blu sites inside our catalogue. Most cluster in the Savona, Genova, and La Spezia provinces.
The three most recognized in our catalogue are Levanto, Diano, and Borgio Verezzi. 18 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
The towns
Levanto
Province: La Spezia · 5 m
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.
Diano
Province: Imperia · 70 m
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.
Borgio Verezzi
Province: Savona · 30 m
Two villages joined under one comune in 1933: Borgio on the coast below, Verezzi on the pink-stone hill above.
- Written about. No. 24.
Camogli
Province: Genova · 32 m
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.
Celle Ligure
Province: Savona · 5 m
A Riviera di Ponente beach town with kilns firing since the 1600s.
Finale Ligure
Province: Savona · 12 m
Three boroughs on the Gulf of Genoa, a walled inland seat set back from two coastal quarters below a karst limestone circuit.
Lavagna
Province: Genova · 6 m
The Tigullio town that gave its name to slate, and its counts to a line of popes.
- Written about. No. 17.
Lerici
Province: La Spezia · 10 m
A fishing harbor under a Pisan-Genoese castle, with the frazione of Tellaro hanging over the rocks at the commune's southern edge.
Pietra Ligure
Province: Savona · 4 m
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.
Santa Margherita Ligure
Province: Genova · 13 m
The Tigullio town that kept its fishing port while the world drove past on the way to Portofino two kilometers further.
Savona
Province: Savona · 4 m
A working port city with two Della Rovere popes, a Sistine Chapel of its own, and a fortress on the old town.
- Written about. No. 28.
Sestri Levante
Province: Genova · 10 m
The Tigullio town of two bays, split by a peninsula where a river once silted an island to the shore.
Varazze
Province: Savona · 10 m
A Ligurian shipbuilding town whose thirteenth-century friar compiled the saint lives that became the most copied book in Europe after the Bible.
- Written about. No. 25.
Chiavari
Province: Genova · 3 m
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.
Framura
Province: La Spezia · 76 m
Five hamlets between sea level and 300 meters on the Riviera di Levante, with Byzantine watchtowers built against Saracen incursions.
Laigueglia
Province: Savona · 6 m
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.
Loano
Province: Savona · 13 m
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.
Moneglia
Province: Genova · 4 m
A bay on the Riviera di Levante, closed by two wooded headlands.
Noli
Province: Savona · 4 m
The fifth Italian maritime republic from 1192 to 1797, a walled coastal town with the Romanesque basilica of San Paragorio outside its gates.
Sanremo
Province: Imperia · 10 m
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.
Recco
Province: Genova · 5 m
A coastal town rebuilt from 90 percent destruction in 1943, known for IGP cheese focaccia and Pro Recco water polo.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Frosolone
Province: Isernia
A 900-meter blade-making town in the Matese foothills, called Italy's Toledo for the knives and scissors forged here since the 1800s.
Sarnico
Province: Bergamo
A medieval lake town at the southern tip of Lago d'Iseo, where the Oglio leaves the lake and Liberty villas line the shore.
Sappada
Province: Udine
A German-speaking alpine village at 1,250 meters near the source of the Piave, settled from East Tyrol in the eleventh century and Italian since 1866.
Capracotta
Province: Isernia
At 1,421 meters one of the highest communes of the Apennines, where a reported 2.56 meters of snow fell in about 18 hours in March 2015.
Belvedere Marittimo
Province: Cosenza
A Riviera dei Cedri town on the Tyrrhenian, its castle set on the highest coastal hill above a convent that has kept a saint's relics for three centuries.