Centro storico di Albenga

Albenga's old town preserves elements of its Roman and medieval past within a compact grid: family towers, stone palazzi, medieval churches and an early Christian baptistery, between the Centa river and the sea.

Why it matters

Albenga's historic centre combines a flat coastal setting with a compact medieval urban fabric. The city is known as the Città delle Cento Torri (City of a Hundred Towers), although the name is not a literal count. Its Roman and medieval core retains narrow lanes, small squares and noble palaces within a compact area. Albenga began as Albingaunum, a Roman town on the Via Iulia Augusta, and its street pattern continues to shape the centre. The city is also called a Città Museo (museum city), with monuments threaded through working streets, from the baptistery to the naval museum.

What to notice

Piazza San Michele, the civic heart, brings together the cathedral, baptistery, old town hall and towers of Palazzo Peloso Cepolla. Most surviving tower houses date to the thirteenth century and stand beside noble family homes, with massive stone bases and brick upper sections. Over time, some remained intact, while others were reduced, incorporated into later buildings, tilted by ground subsidence or damaged by earthquakes. In places, later plaster has been removed to reveal the brick beneath. Around Piazza dei Leoni are the thirteenth-century Lengueglia Costa tower, with its stone base and brick upper shaft, and the Cazzulini tower facing Santa Maria in Fontibus. Its campanile is the only tower in the centre originally built as a bell tower rather than a private stronghold. The wide Conti Cepollini tower leans slightly.

Context and history

The Via Iulia Augusta, laid out in 13 BC, left the town through the Porta d'Arroscia and climbed toward Alassio past funerary monuments including the Pilone. An amphitheatre and necropolis monuments lie on the same slope, and the early Christian church of San Clemente was built over Roman baths. Within the walls, the fifth- or sixth-century baptistery beside the cathedral marks the early Christian town. In the thirteenth century, merchant families built towers that shaped Albenga's skyline and contributed to its name. Later centuries brought sixteenth-century alterations to palaces, a Genoese fortino by the shore, and agricultural and floricultural activity outside the historic core. The annual Palio Storico brings costumed processions into the historic centre.