Soggiorna
Almost every resort on the Riviera claims it was "discovered" by the English in the nineteenth century. Bordighera is the only one that can name which book.
In 1855 Giovanni Ruffini published a novel in Edinburgh, in English, called Doctor Antonio. It was not a travel guide: Ruffini was a patriot in exile, and he wrote it to win British public opinion over to the cause of Italian unification. The love story between the young Englishwoman Lucy and the patriot doctor was the vehicle; the Ligurian landscape was the setting.
It worked, but not only as he intended. Readers came looking for the places in the book. Edmondo De Amicis wrote that among the first English who came to winter here there was not one who had not read it, and that they all asked to see the inn where Lucy had been nursed.
Bordighera, in other words, is a tourist town invented by a piece of political persuasion that overshot. Keep that in mind and the rest of the town explains itself.
The hill village, and the exact date
Bordighera Alta did not grow slowly: it was founded in a single day. On 2 September 1470 thirty-two families from Borghetto San Nicolò met in the parish church and resolved to build a new village on the headland.
The result is still all there: pentagonal walls and three gates, which you pass through in the order history opened them.
- Porta Sottana, to the west, dates from 1470 — the gate of the founding, later rebuilt with the Genoese shield above the arch.
- Porta del Capo, or of Sant'Ampelio, is seventeenth-century.
- Porta Soprana, called della Maddalena, was opened only in 1780.
Three centuries between the first and the last. A village that opens that slowly is a village that was afraid of something for a very long time.
The southernmost point of Liguria
Below the village, on the rocks, stands the eleventh-century church of Sant'Ampelio. The cape it occupies is the southernmost point in all Liguria: Bordighera is the region's most southerly town, which explains the mild winters the English came looking for.
The saint arrived here by boat from Egypt around 400 AD and lived in the caves of the cliff. The town built itself around that hermit a thousand years later.
The palms, and an argument that has lasted centuries
Bordighera is the town of palms, and the reason is not the climate: it is a papal privilege.
In 1586 Sixtus V had the Egyptian obelisk raised at the centre of St Peter's Square — twenty-five metres, some three hundred tonnes — and imposed absolute silence on pain of death. When the ropes began to fail from friction, a sailor, Benedetto Bresca, broke the silence by shouting to wet them. Instead of having him executed, the pope granted his homeland the right to supply the Vatican with the woven palms — the parmureli — for Palm Sunday. It still holds today.
One more thing needs saying, and it is the honest one: Bresca's origin is disputed between Bordighera and Sanremo, and the sources divide. The argument is live and nobody has won it. We do not pick a side: we report that it exists.
Monet, who had come for a month
In January 1884 Claude Monet arrived in Bordighera expecting to stay four weeks. He stayed seventy-nine days.
He wrote down the reason himself: he could not get on top of it. He painted in the Moreno garden on Via Romana — created around 1830 by Vincenzo Moreno, an oil merchant, and famous across Europe for its exotic species — and worked on several canvases at once. He took away around forty (the exact count varies by source, between thirty-eight and about fifty).
It is not decorative trivia: it is the best description of the light on this stretch of coast that exists, made by someone who found it hard.
What is left of the English colony
Two things, both open to visitors.
The Bicknell Museum, opened in 1888 by the English naturalist Clarence Bicknell, is the oldest museum in western Liguria. It houses the International Institute of Ligurian Studies and a library with forty thousand volumes in Italian, twenty thousand in English, six thousand in French and three thousand in German. Those numbers say by themselves who lived here.
Villa Regina Margherita, built between 1914 and 1916 for the first queen of Italy — who died in Bordighera in 1926 — is now a museum.
And the garden on a volcano
The Pallanca Exotic Garden lies on the slopes of Monte Nero, an ancient volcano: three thousand varieties of succulents and cacti over a hectare of rock above the sea, collected by four generations of the same family. Paid entry.
Putting the day together
The shore is the Lungomare Argentina: two kilometres, the longest pedestrian promenade on the western Riviera. It carries that name because Eva Perón inaugurated it, in 1947.
For the classic half-day — hill village in the morning, sea in the afternoon — there is already a dedicated itinerary: what to see in Bordighera in a day.
Frequently asked questions
Why is Bordighera called the town of palms?
Because of a privilege granted by Pope Sixtus V in 1586: the sailor Benedetto Bresca broke the silence imposed during the raising of the obelisk in St Peter's Square by shouting to wet the ropes, and in return his homeland won the right to supply the Vatican with woven palms for Palm Sunday. Bresca's origin is disputed between Bordighera and Sanremo.
What is there to see in Bordighera?
The medieval village of Bordighera Alta, founded on 2 September 1470, with its three gates; the church of Sant'Ampelio on Liguria's southernmost cape; the Bicknell Museum of 1888; Villa Regina Margherita; the Pallanca Exotic Garden; and the Lungomare Argentina, two kilometres of pedestrian promenade.
Why is Bordighera full of English villas?
Because the British winter colony was born from a novel: Giovanni Ruffini's Doctor Antonio, published in English in 1855 to persuade the British to support Italian unification. Readers came looking for the places in the book and never left.
Did Monet paint in Bordighera?
Yes. He arrived in January 1884 meaning to stay a month and stayed seventy-nine days, painting around forty canvases, many of them in the Moreno garden on Via Romana.
Is Bordighera the southernmost town in Liguria?
Yes: Capo Sant'Ampelio is the region's most southerly point. It is also the reason for the mild climate that drew the English here in the nineteenth century.