For New, Authentic Travel Experiences, Head To Italy’s Western Riviera

Italy’s Riviera di Ponente, or Western Riviera, has long attracted travelers—in the late 19th century new rail connections made it easier for well-heeled and titled English and Russians to escape their dreary winters, but before and after WWII, destinations on the Côte d'Azur and Riviera di Levante (the Eastern Riviera), like Rapallo, Portofino, and later, Cinque Terre, stepped into the spotlight, drawing celebrity names and eventually flocks of tourists.

There’s the the stunning beauty, of course, but Roberta Giovannina, founder of Sanremo Experience, a firm specializing in travel excursions in Liguria and the Côte d'Azur, says the Riviera di Levante’s location (Genoa to the Tuscan border) is another reason the area continues to entice millions of travelers. “It’s close to Florence and Milan with good connections to Rome,” she says. “From these destinations it’s easy to reach Genoa and Cinque Terre. You need more time to reach the Western Riviera.”

But the Western Riviera, that stretch of scenic, if somewhat flatter, coast running west of Genoa to the French border, is definitely worth the effort to get to. (Easiest connections from the US are through Nice.) Giovannina says that while many of her clients have Cinque Terre high on their to-see lists, frequent travelers to Italy are also eager to seek out new destinations.

“Well-travelled Americans love the Riviera dei Fiori.* They consider it sort of an extension of the French Riviera,” she says. After lockdown she notes that visitors have been keen to explore “hidden medieval villages for a full immersion in nature, local traditions, art and history. The keyword nowadays is off-the-beaten path. In this area [we] have some of the best villages of Italy.” (*The Western Riviera has several sub-sections—the Riviera dei Fiori reaches from the French border to Cervo, and the Riviera delle Palme, roughly from Laigueglia to Varazze. The coastal area near Genoa is called the Beigua Riviera.)

Visitors to the Riviera di Ponente can choose a resort city like glamorous Sanremo or smaller places, such as the medieval village of Cervo, with many interesting stops along the way. Here are two towns worth getting to know if you’re heading to the Western Riviera.

BORDIGHERA: RIVIERA DEI FIORI

Bordighera, an elegant town on the Riviera dei Fiori, is very much an insider resort—a choice getaway for second homes for Italians and other Europeans attracted by the wonderful climate, fin-de-siècle villas, luxuriant gardens and vistas that enchanted Monet. (The artist, intending to visit for a few weeks, was captivated by the town’s beauty, and stayed several months.)

In Bordighera, as in Sanremo, architectural styles pivot between the medieval and Belle Epoque, a period when the town became a prime destination for British travelers escaping in winter to the primary-colored town by the sea. It was an early magnet for VIPs—the famous architect Charles Garnier, whose buildings left an indelible mark on Paris and Monaco, built his own villa here, along with a church and the town hall.

One villa he created for a wealthy German banker came to be called Villa Etelinda when owned by the Bowes-Lyon family. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth, married to George VI) visited as a child. Irene Brin, a pioneering journalist whose family was from Bordighera, wrote for Harper’s Bazaar in the 1950s at Diana Vreeland’s request, helping to popularize the post-World War II Italian fashion industry; a museum and garden commemorate her work in the nearby hamlet of Sasso di Bordighera.

While an established European favorite, Bordighera is slowly catching on with the overseas market, especially for those on repeat visits to Italy. “I visit Bordighera three to four times a week in the good season,” says Roberta Giovannina of Sanremo Experience. In addition to the historic mansions and gardens, Giovannina says she recommends Bordighera for the “crystalline sea and the sea promenade, which is full of restaurants and bars. The village [Bordighera Alta] is terrific, especially during the evenings in summer,” she says. (Bordighera enjoys Bandiera Blu status for its clean waters and its lengthy sea promenade, running for more than two kilometers, is the longest on the Italian Riviera.)

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The villas. While the Villa Ettelinda and Villa Regina Margherita (once owned by a Queen of Italy) are closed for refurbishment (catch glimpses of them as you stroll the Via Romana, Bordighera’s prestigious residential street), you can visit the star architect Charles Garnier’s home, Villa Garnier, and gardens (reservation required), and even stay at the Villa (or one of its apartments) run by the sisters of the Congregation of St. Joseph of Aosta. The Villa Mariani, formerly the home of a noted Italian Impressionist painter, renowned for his graceful landscapes and portraits, also has a notable garden with olive trees that were painted by Monet (Olive Trees Study, 1884) and a well-preserved artist’s atelier.

Also not to miss: The Clarence Bicknell Museum on Via Romana, an active library filled with drawings, books, magazines and butterfly specimens collected by Bicknell, a British writer, botanist and philanthropist during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Bordighera Alta. The antico borgo, or old town, is a treadmill-worthy climb up to a medieval square, the Piazza del Popolo, through narrow, not-changed-in-centuries caruggi studded with small shops and restaurants offering sea-centric Bordighera cuisine. Some local favorites to try include the brandacujùn, an appetizer made with codfish, pine nuts and potatoes; pasta with prawns and mussels (spaghetti alla chittara allo scoglio); and snack favorites like the onion tart, pissaladière, and the anchovy tomato pizza, sardenaira.

Lodging: The five-star hotel in town is the Grand Hotel Del Mare Resort & Spa, with a heated outdoor saltwater pool, private beach and spa.

You can stay on the Via Romana when you book at the Hotel Villa Elisa, located in an historic ochre villa dating from the early 20th century. Antonio Oggero opened the hotel in 1909; today his fourth-generation descendant, Francesca Oggero, runs the

property. Set in lush gardens with honeysuckle and bougainvillea, the hotel has come to include a wellness spa and good-sized pool heated in cool weather for use year round, with canopied daybeds and sun loungers on the patio. There’s a small restaurant, open for breakfast, lunch and dinner; you can dine outdoors in one of the garden areas in the front or back of the villa. The lobby rooms contain pieces from the period when the hotel first opened.

RIVIERA DELLE PALME: ALASSIO

As you approach Alassio from the motorway on a sunny day in summer, you come across a splendid seascape not uncommon in Liguria—a waterfront dotted with pastel houses, terracotta rooftops, palm trees, gleaming hotels and an aqua sea. But as you get closer to the town you see something that is unique in Liguria, a stretch of sandy beach, the longest on the Riviera running for some four kilometers. In summer, a swirl of striped and colored beach umbrellas marking the various bagni fill the beach.

Alassio, on the Riviera delle Palme, has been attracting visitors since the 19th century, when the British settled in for the mild winters; in the 1950s it became a cafe-society destination luring artists, writers, and other celebrities who provided the town with a cerebral take on la dolce vita. Today Alassio is a popular beach resort for Italian and European families.

While many come for the beach, or for easy sightseeing, like strolling through Alassio’s Budello, the oldest part of town with many shops (and even an English bookstore), or a more rigorous archaeological trek, like the one from Alassio to nearby Albenga along the Roman road, Via Julia Augusta, there’s plenty to do and to see. “I recommend Alassio to my clients because it is a peaceful village overlooking the sea, I love the Budello, the romantic Muretto, the gardens of Villa della Pergola in spring when the wisteria bloom” says Giovannini. “It is also one of the few Ligurian villages [that is] completely flat, easy to walk.”

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The Muretto: In the 1950s when celebrities came to Alassio, a must stop was the Caffè Roma, owned by Mario Berrino, who liked to collect autographs from his famous customers. He came up with the idea of creating tiles with those signatures and fixing it to a stone wall near his caffè for decorative, and, no doubt, some branding purposes; over time his creation would become one of Alassio’s most notable sites. Ernest Hemingway’s autograph was among the first to be fixed to what would become an intricate mosaic of post-war movers and shakers; tiles include such names as Vittorio de Sica and Anita Ekberg, famous for her role in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Today the wall has about 1000 tiles, many of Italian celebrities.

Try the local treat, Baci di Alassio. These layered cookies, Alassio’s answer to the French macaron, were created in the early 1900s by Rinaldo Balzola, a pastry chef to the Italian royal court in Turin, and his father, Pasquale, an entrepreneur who opened a concert caffè in town, which, over the decades, became the landmark Pasticceria Balzola.

The baci, or kisses, are made of two small chocolate wafers, from a batter without flour or butter, and are filled with.a rich chocolate ganache. The Balzolas patented the cookies in 1919, and it’s been a culinary symbol of the city for decades.

The historic Pasticceria Balzola, today run by Pasquale’s descendants, Carlomaria and Maria Theresa Balzola, is located in the heart of Alassio (Piazza Matteotti). There’s a large outdoor terrace, which is great for people watching, having a tea and sampling the baci and other pastries made here, along with artisanal ice creams and aperitifs. You can enjoy an ample indoor tea room, too, with an 18th-century Venetian decor, good for when the weather turns cool. Carolomaria says the famed baci, baked in a separate kitchen near the store, take two days to make. The pasticceria also produces a host of other treats like soft amaretti, gobbeletti tarts, and pane di marinaio (a dense version of panettone).

Sail to Gallinara Island. The waters off Gallinara Island, a short trip from Alassio’s harbor, once attracted Roman ships; today yachts, boats, and snorkelers come here, but the privately owned island isn’t open to visitors (and you can’t dock), as it’s a nature reserve with hundreds of floral species and a large nesting colony of Herring sea gulls. But even if you can’t set foot on this islet, you can sail around it and take in the stunning views of the rocky coves and Alassio coastline.

Experience ittiturismo. Gian Marco Sanfilippo and Micol Basso run Ittiturismo L’Isola, a company specializing in pescaturismo, the seafaring counterpart to the farm-based agriturismo, that focuses on sustainable marine practices and experiences, where travelers get to know about (and sometimes participate in) fishing expeditions, and sample the local catch in specially prepared menus served on land or sea.

At Ittiturismo L’Isola you can come for lunch or dinner, served aboard a boat or on the docks at Porto Luca Ferrari, Alassio’s harbor, where menus feature fish caught by the Basso and Sanfilippo team or colleagues in the waters off the coasts of Alassio and Albenga and other parts of Liguria. There are three courses for dinner, with such favorites, depending on the daily catch, as Ligurian mussels, oysters, squid, mackerel, and shrimp and anchovies from Imperia on offer.

Stop at the Carlo Levi Gallery. In the Palazzo Morteo, you can admire the paintings of the doctor-artist-writer, Carlo Levi, famous for his groundbreaking book, Christ Stopped at Eboli, about Southern Italy and the towns he was exiled to in the 1930s for his anti-fascist views.

Lodging: Alassio has two five-star hotels, the Grand Hotel Alassio Resort & Spa, with a private beach; and the Villa della Pergola, a Relais & Châteaux property built in the 19th century, with historic gardens (those not staying at the hotel can visit them by purchasing tickets in advance).

Popular with Italian families for decades, the Hotel Eden Alaxi Hotel, which opened in 1925, offers good prices, a private beach (available year-round), terrace and beach dining, and a friendly, enthusiastic staff. The tall-ceilinged, sea-fronting superior double rooms come with large balconies, and the background sounds of a gently pounding surf. Guests often include extended families on annual trips who book for a week with grandparents fondly recalling the Alassio of their youth to first-timers at the hotel, and heading to the beach from morning to early evening with their youngest nipoti.