Sanremo

Sanremo wears several lives at once: flower capital of the Riviera, winter retreat of nineteenth-century aristocracy, and the seaside stage where Italian music is decided every February. Between the palm-lined promenade and the spiralling medieval quarter above, it rewards travellers who look past the festival lights into a genuinely layered Ligurian city.

Why visit

Sanremo works on more registers than any other town on the Riviera di Ponente. There is the seafront, of course — a broad promenade of palms and hotels where the climate stays gentle from early spring into autumn — but the reason to linger is the contrast between that polished resort front and the dense old town folded into the hill behind it. Garden lovers come for the villas and the flower-growing tradition that still supplies concert halls across Europe; history readers find traces of Roman Matutiana, Belle Époque tourism and a famous Swedish resident; and anyone curious about Italian popular culture can stand outside the theatre where the national song festival has played out for decades. It is also a practical base: a long coastal cycle path starts here, and the western Ligurian villages are an easy drive away.

Character and history

The settlement began in Roman times as Matutia or Villa Matutiana, but the medieval town — what is now La Pigna — grew on the hill for defence, its houses stacked in concentric rings around the summit. The name Sanremo derives from San Romolo, an early bishop of Genoa venerated here, and not from any legend about Remus. From the mid-nineteenth century the mild winter climate turned Sanremo into a health resort for European nobility: Russian grand dukes, English families and German royalties built villas along the coast, leaving behind the Orthodox church, exotic gardens and Moorish revival architecture that still distinguish the seafront quarters. Alfred Nobel spent his final years here and died at his villa in 1896; the young Italo Calvino grew up in the town and wrote about its labyrinthine lanes. Flower cultivation, begun with carnations, became the economic backbone beside tourism, and in 1951 the song festival at the Ariston gave Sanremo its modern popular identity.

What to see

Start with La Pigna (Sanremo Old Town), the medieval core that Calvino likened to a casbah: covered alleys, arched underpasses and tiny piazzas climbing to the Basilica Concathedral of San Siro, the city’s oldest church at the summit. Descend past the exuberant Russian Orthodox Church of Christ the Saviour, built for the winter colony of Russian aristocrats, and the Sanremo Civic Museum (Palazzo Borea d’Olmo) in one of the finest baroque palaces on the coast. On the seafront, the Ariston Theatre and the Belle Époque Sanremo Casino, opened in 1905 as Italy’s oldest casino, anchor the resort quarter. The recently restored Forte di Santa Tecla above the old port now hosts exhibitions and concerts under the state museums directorate. East of the centre, the Gardens of Villa Ormond hold the small Floriseum – Flower Museum of Sanremo, devoted to the floriculture that made the town famous, and the Moorish-style Villa Nobel, Nobel’s residence, now a museum. Above the city, the earthquake-ruined village of Bussana Vecchia has been an artists’ colony since the late 1950s.

How to experience

The classic day: coffee in a Pigna café, the climb through the old quarter in the cool of morning, then the palm promenade and a long lunch near the old port. Rent a bicycle for the coastal cycle path that runs along the sea — it is one of the best ways to feel the Riviera’s geography. Time a visit to the fort’s current programme of tours and concerts, and check the civic museum and gardens for opening days, which vary by season. If your trip falls in February, the festival transforms the town; in late spring, the flower parade fills the streets with floats.

Practical planning

Sanremo is served by the A10 motorway and by trains on the Ventimiglia–Genoa coastal line; the nearest airports are Nice and Genoa. The old town is steep and best explored on foot with proper shoes. Accommodation spans grand historic hotels to family-run pensions; the tourist office site, info-sanremo.com, publishes current events, and cultura.gov.it lists the fort’s programme. Opening hours of the casino, villas and museums change seasonally, so confirm on their official pages before setting out. Allow two to three days to cover both the city and its surroundings.

Nearby places

West along the coast lies Bordighera, another palm town of the winter colony, while Imperia eastward pairs two historic quarters with olive country. Inland, the stone village of Dolceacqua sits beneath a Doria castle, and the Riviera dei Fiori area frames the whole stretch of coast.