Everyone knows Liguria for its sea—the ribbons of turquoise, the piazza of Portofino, the pics from Cinque Terre. But woefully underappreciated is the hinterland: venture inland from the Riviera and you enter a different world—one of terraced olive groves, misty chestnut woods, and ancient stone villages clinging to hillsides.

Italo Calvino, who spent his youth in these parts, once wrote of not one but many “Liguries”: the gilded Riviera of Sanremo’s casinos, the seafaring Genova with its port of farewells, and the rugged backcountry—“maigre et osseuse” (lean and bony)—of dry-stone terraces, a land he held dearest.