Sanremo

Sanremo, perched like a gemstone on the sunlit rim of the Italian Riviera, encompasses roughly 54 square kilometers and shelters some 55,000 inhabitants beneath its Mediterranean skies. Positioned in the province of Imperia, northwestern Italy, this coastal commune occupies a slender shelf of land between the Ligurian Sea and the rugged foothills of the Maritime Alps.

From its Roman origins as Matutia and Villa Matutiana, Sanremo has evolved through epochs of peril and prosperity. Its earliest settlers favored the low-lying shores, but Saracen incursions in the early Middle Ages drove the populace uphill, where they erected the castle and the walled heart of La Pigna. Those grey-stone lanes, almost perfectly preserved, still ascend like veins to Saint Syrus Cathedral, a slender spire marking the town’s medieval bloom. Power shifted from the counts of Ventimiglia to the bishops of Genoa, then into the hands of the Doria and De Mari families, until civic pride infused a successful bid for autonomy in the latter fifteenth century. Walls gave way to expansion; the settlement crept westward toward the sea, and a tapestry of Baroque and Neoclassical façades began to define the skyline.

Sanremo’s resistance to Genoese hegemony culminated in 1753, when two decades of tension erupted into open revolt. The Republic responded with Santa Tecla, a triangular fortress on the beach, whose artillery once glared across the waves. In later centuries that fortress became a prison, operational until 2002, and today houses a museum, its cold cells and barrel-vaulted corridors a silent testament to the town’s defiance.

The nineteenth century ushered in a golden age of tourism. The Kingdom of Sardinia absorbed Sanremo in 1814, and by mid-century the first grand hotels rose along the coast. European aristocracy flocked here: Empress Elisabeth of Austria sought solace among palm-fringed promenades; Empress Maria Alexandrovna and Czar Nicholas II found refuge in genteel leisure; Alfred Nobel, drawn by mild winters, made Sanremo his home, christening his Moorish-style Villa Nobel “Mio Nido.” The city acquired the epithet la Città dei Fiori—the City of Flowers—as its gentle climate nurtured bougainvillea, citrus groves and a burgeoning cut-flower industry that would yield a Denominazione di Origine Protetta olive oil and vibrant blossoms for markets from Arma di Taggia to Bordighera.

In April 1920, the world’s gaze turned to Sanremo for the Straits Conference. Allied statesmen convened at Devachan Castle, resolving the partitioning of former Ottoman territories; the British Mandate for Palestine emerged from those drawn-out sessions. Decades later, in 1972, Sanremo again became a stage for change as Italy’s first public gay rights demonstration protested a Catholic-inspired congress on “sexual deviance,” signaling a social awakening long before many of its peers.

The rhythms of daily life in Sanremo are shaped by its infrastructure and geography. The Autostrada dei Fiori (A10 motorway) threads along the coast on viaducts that offer panoramic glimpses of tiled roofs and shimmering sea, linking Genoa to Ventimiglia and onward into France. Inland, the Aurelia Bis bypass relieves some of the congestion that plagues the original Roman via Aurelia. A trolleybus hums beside the SS1, gliding between Taggia and Ventimiglia. The railway, once a cliff-hugging marvel at sea level, now tunnels beneath the hills, its former coastal path reborn as a 24-kilometer cycle and pedestrian trail stretching from Ospedaletti to San Lorenzo al Mare. Bike kiosks dot the route, inviting exploration of windswept beaches and olive-scatted terraces.

Maritime connections endure through Portosole’s nine hundred berths and the modest commercial port of Porto Vecchio. Above the bustle, rusted pylons of the defunct Sanremo-Monte Bignone cableway stand sentinel, relics of a three-section line that once vaulted passengers from town center to summit. Closed in 1981, its stations have been repurposed: one a nursery school, another a civil-protection outpost; the rest left to the silence of abandonment.

Cultural life in Sanremo thrums to a musical heartbeat. The Ariston Theatre, its Art Nouveau marquee glowing each February, hosts Il Festival—officially the Sanremo Music Festival—where Italian songwriters have competed since 1951. It was here that Domenico Modugno first sang “Nel blu, dipinto di blu,” a melody that soared around the globe as “Volare.” Autumn brings the Tenco Prize for songwriting, and early in the year vibrant carnival-style floats muster for the Flowers Parade. In mid-August, fireworks arc above the harbor in a contest that draws pyrotechnicians from around the world.

Beyond the spectacle, Sanremo’s palate is shaped by Ligurian tradition: thin, olive-oil–slicked focaccia and its onion-topped cousin; farinata—chickpea pancake—that emerges crisp from wood-fired ovens; Torta Verde, a herb-filled flatbread; and Taggiasca olives, plucked from gnarled trees on sun-drenched slopes. These simple delights, sipped and sampled beneath shaded cypress and fragrant mimosa, root the visitor in local provenance.

Gambling has long been woven into the city’s identity. Since 1905, the Municipal Casino—an exemplar of Liberty style—has beckoned guests to its gaming halls. It endured the turmoil of two world wars and has retained a legal exception that allows it to rival the chic casinos of nearby France and Monaco. Each autumn, professional poker players assemble here for a European Poker Tour event, and aficionados recall telesina, a five-card stud variant said to have originated in Sanremo’s back rooms.

Architecture in the city fuses epochs. The collegiate basilica of San Siro, erected in the twelfth century atop early Christian foundations, exhibits Romanesque-Gothic austerity, its three naves and bell tower standing sentinel above La Pigna. The Church of Santo Stefano, born of a seventeenth-century Jesuit monastery, shelters Mignard’s Holy Family and Piola’s San Francesco Saverio. On the heights, the Sanctuary of Madonna della Costa, erected in 1361 to commemorate liberation from Genoese rule, overlooks the clay-tiled roofs, its baroque chapels and fourteenth-century Madonna resonant with centuries of devotion. The Church of Christ the Savior, conceived in the late nineteenth century by Russian nobility and refined by Pietro Agosti, now serves both parishioners and the curious passerby, its onion domes a sliver of foreign reverie beside the casino.

Civic palaces and villas speak of wealth and taste. Palazzo Bellevue, once a grand hotel with spa-like “kurhaus” annex, now houses municipal offices behind its eastern-influenced façade. Nearby, Palazzo Borea d’Olmo—adorned with Montorsoli sculpture and Merano frescoes—holds the civic museum on its noble floor. Villas commissioned by lawyers, nobles and industrialists line the hills: Zirio’s 1868 retreat; Caravadossi d’Aspremont’s elegantly planned residence; Nobel’s Moorish “Mio Nido,” with its intricate woodwork and crenellated roofline, now a museum of nineteenth-century invention.

The lush expanse of Villa Ormond offers an English garden framed by subtropical specimens, a legacy of Madame Ormond’s vision and Emile Réverdin’s 1889 reconstruction. Here, statues honor Altamirano and Nicholas I, while a Japanese sector commemorates Sanremo’s twinning with Atami. The villa’s grounds host the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, where summer seminars unfold beneath palm fronds.

Military relics lurk at the city’s edge: the Torre della Ciapela, a Genoese bastion from circa 1550; the later Torre dell’Arma; and the triangular Forte di Santa Tecla, its artillery emplacements now repurposed as a multipurpose hall. Along the shoreline, fragments of anti-landing walls and machine-gun emplacements whisper of twentieth-century conflict.

At the heart of daily life is Via Giacomo Matteotti—la Vasca—a pedestrianized artery that pulses with cafés, boutiques and artisanal gelaterie. Brass grates engraved with names of Festival winners line its cobbles, and at the corner of Via Escoffier stands the statue of Mike Bongiorno, commemorating his tenure as Festival host. Here, in the shadow of the Ariston and the casino, Sanremo’s past and present converge in a promenade of human stories and shifting tides.

Beneath the surface, archaeological vestiges reemerge. Villa Matutia north of the cemetery holds foundations of a second-century Roman villa, its baths and service quarters discernible in carefully excavated rooms. In nearby Bussana, another Roman villa yields its secrets to patient scholars.

Transportation today combines modern convenience with scenic pleasure. Riviera Trasporti’s buses weave across urban and extra-urban lines, while FlixBus links Sanremo to Milan, Turin and beyond. The nearest airport lies in Nice—forty-five minutes by road—reminding visitors that this borderland has always straddled cultures, languages and histories.

From dawn’s gilded hush to the roseate glow of twilight, Sanremo unfolds as a living palimpsest. Its waves pulse with the echoes of Roman bathers, medieval sentinels and nineteenth-century aesthetes. Festivals illuminate the winter dusk; olive groves and flower fields scent the air. Bars of Art Nouveau ironwork frame sunlit piazzas, and the low hum of traffic along the A10 reminds all that this delicate jewel remains connected to a wider world.

In Sanremo, time layers itself without erasure. Each stone, each arch and each vine-clad balcony carries the imprint of epochs. It is a place where history and culture advance hand in hand, where the Mediterranean’s azure mirror reflects both an eternal sky and the aspirations of those who have called this shore home. Here, at the meeting of sea and mountain, Sanremo reveals itself not as a static postcard but as an ongoing narrative—one of resilience, refinement and quiet grandeur.