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Think of Ligurian architecture and you’ll most likely imagine brightly colored houses stacked precariously on top of one another and suspended over the bright blue sea. These painted houses may be one of the most iconic architectures of the region (not to mention in all of Italy), but there’s much more to the region’s design than these confetti-col...

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When it comes to the Italian Riviera, people seem to patter on and on about Cinque Terre, but just down the coast is another (equally as charming) stretch of shoreline, with a literary history to boot. The so-called Gulf of Poets (Golfo dei Poeti), formally the Gulf of La Spezia, offers the same colorful towns and clear waters of its much-talked-ab...

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The museum complex of Villa Durazzo Centurione is a seat consisting of two historic houses of nobility, by a park/Italian garden and an art museum "Vittorio G. Rossi" in Santa Margherita Ligure, in the Tigullio, in the province of Genoa. The site, owned by the city, is also used for cultural and artistic events and exhibitions. The complex consists...

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It’s beige and a little wan, but like many beloved brown foods, every spoonful of salsa di noci tastes like, “Why don’t I eat this more often?” The predecessor of pesto alla genovese by at least 300 years, Ligurian walnut sauce is, of course, made with nuts, used to dress pasta, and traditionally pestata (i.e. “pounded” with a mortar and pestle). A...

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While many (many!) come to Italy for the well-known wheat-based favorites like pizza and pasta, Liguria has a rich culture of non-wheat-based foods, the topography of the region being particularly inhospitable to growing the grain. Here, rather, you’ll find chestnuts milled into flour and rolled into tagliatelle, delicious with funghi, and, most im...

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The first time I stepped into the world of Bussana Vecchia, I was a child and I don’t retain a real memory of it. It’s more of a blurred image, a cloud of colors, of alleys going uphill, and of my father’s arms on which I clung for help in climbing those alleys. I remember the large church with no ceiling as if it was a temple from another world, a...

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Liguria’s spectacular cuisine is often boiled down into just two internationally renowned players: focaccia and pesto. While they rightfully deserve their place in the spotlight, the fluffy and the basil-y often overshadow the rest of the region’s vegetable-forward, innovative dishes. Long before the country of Italy was unified, the port city of G...

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We are on our way to Portofino early, in an attempt to enjoy the candy-colored village before the inevitable crowds arrive. A relaxing, luxurious girls’ weekend filled with trofie al pesto and pansotti alla salsa di noci, stuffed anchovies, along with sips of barsotto to wash it all down, seems like just the thing to cure the blues brought on by a...

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Nature has its way of derailing travel plans. A landslide in August 2023 in the French Alps blocked the main railway just west of the Mont Cenis tunnel. This route is used by all trains from Italy to Lyon and Paris. The sleek French TGVs and the even sleeker Italian Frecciarossa trains competing on the lucrative link from Milan to the French capita...

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“What is it with the Americans and Cinque Terre?” asked a Danish fellow dining beside me at La Cantina di Miky in Monterosso al Mare. “We thought we found a hidden gem, then we got here, and I’ve never seen so many Americans in my life.”  For better or worse, Italy’s famed Cinque Terre, or “Five Towns,” is an American darling. The craggy, vertigino...

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