easy hikes and city walks in Italy
The Sacra di San Michele near Turin is Northern Italy’s grandest and most sacred abbey. Italy’s industrial heartland lies within a triangle formed by Genoa, Milan and Torino, but, this being Italy, these three great industrial towns are hardly the equivalent of Dortmund, Manchester or Cleveland and pack a powerful “triple punch” of beautiful architecture,…
If you want to accompany us on the last stage of our Ligurian hill walk, you’d better be ready for some serious climbing In our most recent post, (perhaps a little misguiding) headlined The Five Walks of Finale Ligure, we ultimately gave you only three: a beach promenade, a stroll through the historical centre, and…
This small Riviera seaside town has something for every hiker: two legs, three legs or four This past winter, we have been exploring hiking trails on our local coast, on either side – French as well as Italian – of the Riviera, and what better place to end this series of walks, as the winter…
Elsewhere in the world, the word may be that “the Russians are coming”; in the coastal region between Nice and Sanremo, they have arrived long ago and been part of the local communities for well over 150 years Once upon a time, before the advent of satellite TV dishes and the world-wide web, immigrants, even…
Apricale may well be the most beautiful but is certainly the most visually stunning of all the towns on the Ligurian hills. It is not only picturesque but also a great base for hiking trips into the Riviera’s mountainous hinterland. Growing out of the cliffside like something perhaps not altogether benign … … the town…
On the basis of the evidence, it feels safe to say that the Empire’s troops did not come here to enjoy the beautiful beaches The history of the Riviera, if we are honest, begins in the 17th century when its oldest towns were built, and it really picks up 200 years later with the invention…
Forbidden fruit: taste it and find out what made Sanremo famous. Coastal walks on the Italian Riviera, ideally, connect two seaside resorts that are well worth a visit in their own right. Whether or not these outings are successful, ultimately depends as much on these two resorts as on the walk itself – the more…
If you blink at the wrong moment on your Riviera train journey, you may miss it, but that would be a loss and a pity We first discovered Cervo about a year ago when our train journey to some other place down the Italian Riviera had been interrupted, falling rocks having damaged the tracks, and…
Walks on the Riviera coast work best when they combine colour and contrast The French and the Italian sides of the Riviera, while having much in common, also reflect many characteristics of the very different countries to which they are attached. The French Riviera, for example, is better “organized” and more clearly structured into individual…
What to do with only two hours in Genoa? Genoa is the capital of the Italian Riviera, more or less what Nice is on the French side, but with one important distinction: Whereas all visitors of the French Riviera will, sooner or later, get to Nice (to go shopping, to do sight-seeing or simply to…