Bandiera Blu
Bandiera Blu in Liguria
21 towns
Liguria holds 21 Bandiera Blu sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Savona, Genova, and La Spezia provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Levanto, Diano, and Borgio Verezzi. 18 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Levanto
Province: La Spezia · 5 m
The sixth Cinque Terre, a beach town and Cittaslow at the gateway of the national park, with a surf break and a striped Gothic church.
Diano
Province: Imperia · 70 m
A twin destination on the Riviera dei Fiori — the medieval hilltop borgo of Diano Castello above and the palm-fronted beach resort of Diano Marina below — sharing one Bay of Diano, one Taggiasca olive valley, and the longest Bandiera Blu beach in western Liguria.
Borgio Verezzi
Province: Savona · 30 m
Two villages joined under one comune in 1933: Borgio on the Bandiera Blu beach and Verezzi at 200 meters on the pink-stone hill above.
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Camogli
Province: Genova · 32 m
A fishing village on the Golfo Paradiso whose nineteenth-century fleet of a thousand white sails made it Italy's third maritime power in the Mediterranean.
Celle Ligure
Province: Savona · 5 m
A Riviera di Ponente beach town with kilns firing since the 1600s and a Lucio Fontana ceramic on the parish church façade.
Finale Ligure
Province: Savona · 12 m
Three boroughs on the Gulf of Genoa, with walled Finalborgo as the Del Carretto seat and a Bandiera Blu beachfront below.
Lavagna
Province: Genova · 6 m
The Tigullio town that gave its name to slate and to Pope Innocent IV, host each 14 August of the Torta dei Fieschi pageant.
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Lerici
Province: La Spezia · 10 m
The northern anchor of the Bay of Poets, a fishing harbour under a Pisan-Genoese castle where Byron and Shelley wrote and where the frazione of Tellaro hangs over the rocks at the bay's southern edge.
Pietra Ligure
Province: Savona · 4 m
A Riviera di Ponente town named after the seventh-century castle on its rock, with one of the largest flower carpets in Europe every three years.
Santa Margherita Ligure
Province: Genova · 13 m
The Tigullio town that kept its fishing port while the world drove past on the way to Portofino two kilometers further.
Savona
Province: Savona · 4 m
A working port city with two Della Rovere popes, a Sistine Chapel that came before the Roman one, and a fortress on the old town.
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Sestri Levante
Province: Genova · 10 m
The Tigullio town of two bays, where Hans Christian Andersen stayed in 1833 and Guglielmo Marconi ran his shortwave radio experiments.
Varazze
Province: Savona · 10 m
A Ligurian shipbuilding town whose thirteenth-century friar compiled the saint lives that became the most copied book in Europe after the Bible.
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Chiavari
Province: Genova · 3 m
The Tigullio capital between Portofino and the Cinque Terre, a 27,000-person Genoese trading town built around a thirteenth-century grid of porticoed streets.
Framura
Province: La Spezia · 76 m
Five hamlets between sea level and 300 meters on the Riviera di Levante, with Byzantine watchtowers built against Saracen incursions.
Laigueglia
Province: Savona · 6 m
A former coral-fishing village on the Riviera di Ponente, with a curved Baroque parish church and a fishermen's grid of caruggi behind the beach.
Loano
Province: Savona · 13 m
A Doria fief on the Savona coast with a Renaissance palace, a Roman imperial mosaic, and a top-ten world marina.
Moneglia
Province: Genova · 4 m
A bay on the Riviera di Levante between Punta Moneglia and Punta Rospo, birthplace of the Genoese painter Luca Cambiaso in 1527.
Noli
Province: Savona · 4 m
The fifth Italian maritime republic from 1192 to 1797, a walled coastal town with the Romanesque basilica of San Paragorio outside its gates.
Sanremo
Province: Imperia · 10 m
The capital of the Italian Riviera dei Fiori — Belle Époque casino and palm-lined Lungomare on the seafront, the medieval labyrinth of La Pigna climbing the hill behind, and a year-round mild climate that built the original Northern European winter trade.
Recco
Province: Genova · 5 m
A coastal town on the Golfo Paradiso, rebuilt from 90 percent destruction in 1943 and known for IGP cheese focaccia and Pro Recco water polo.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Putignano
Province: Bari
Europe's longest-running carnival — Putignano Carnevale has run continuously since 1394, with 631 years of cartapesta papier-mâché floats, a 26,000-resident Murgia town on the Bari–Lecce plateau, and the Grotta del Trullo karst cave inside the centro.
Pistoia
Province: Pistoia
Italy's nursery capital and the medieval Tuscan rival that gave its name to the pistol — a quietly extraordinary centro storico of zebra-striped Romanesque churches, Andrea della Robbia's polychrome frieze on the Ospedale del Ceppo, and Italy's Capital of Culture 2017, all 30 minutes from Florence by train.
Tropea
Province: Vibo Valentia
Cliff town on a tufa headland over the Tyrrhenian Coast of the Gods, with a Norman monastery on a sea rock.
Caldes
Province: Trento
A scattered Val di Sole commune on the Noce, six hamlets gathered around a thirteenth-century tower-house castle that once belonged to the Thun family.
Cantiano
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A border borgo at 374 meters under Monte Catria on the old Via Flaminia, known for the Good Friday Turba and the sour-cherry visciola harvest.