Borgo di Tellaro

Tellaro is a compact fishing village on a rocky headland at the eastern edge of the Gulf of Poets. Pastel houses, stepped alleys and arched passageways cluster around the church of San Giorgio.

Why it matters

Tellaro is a compact village on the Golfo dei Poeti, its houses rising in layers of pink, ochre and white above the shoreline. It belongs to I Borghi più belli d'Italia, and local tradition gives the borgo a distinctive, hushed character suspended between sea and sky.

What to notice

Arched passageways and narrow lanes shape the village's dense architecture, with houses sometimes leaning together to form covered passages typical of Ligurian fishing settlements. The terrace beside the church of San Giorgio overlooks the sea, while the oratory of Santa Maria 'n Selàa has a facade bearing a bas-relief of hooded figures. The built landscape reflects the village's close relationship with its rocky setting.

Context and history

The borgo descends from an older settlement. The Diocese of La Spezia, Sarzana and Brugnato records Tellaro as the heir of San Giorgio di Barbazzano, a church documented from 1152 among inland olive groves. Local tradition holds that Barbazzano was destroyed in a Saracen raid and survivors rebuilt on the more defensible rock of Tellaro. The coast remained under the Republic of Genoa from the twelfth century, and the village's compact, vertical architecture reflects its fortified form. Several explanations for the name Tellaro have been proposed, from tela, cloth, to the Latin telus, dart, or the pre-Latin tular, boundary. The octopus-and-bells story is another local legend: an octopus caught in the bell ropes of San Giorgio is said to have warned the village of a corsair raid. Writers associated with the surrounding gulf include Shelley, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Montale.