Altitude: 15 m a.s.l.
Area: 55 sq km
Distance from Imperia: 25 km
Inhabitants: in 1881: 2277 - in 2017: 54824
Patron Saint Day: October 13th - San Romolo
Information: Municipality phone 0184 580500
Sanremo is certainly today the richest and most elegant worldly center of western Liguria. Its touristic fortune was born with the discovery of the Riviera by the first English travelers at the end of the nineteenth century and developed between the two World Wars.
If the fabulous Belle Epoque has left unmistakable traces in palaces, villas and hotels, certainly the vestiges of much older times hidden in its historic center are much more interesting.
On the nearby Monte Colma there are the ruins of the best preserved “castellaro” in Liguria which testifies, among other things, as the Ligurians, settled there permanently already in the IV century BC, persisted there even in the full Roman age, when Sanremo (then "Villa Matuciana") was already a remarkable center on Via Julia Augusta, later devastated in 641 AD by the Longobards.
Passed in fief around the year 1000 to Teodolfo, the bishop of Genoa, Sanremo was sold towards the end of 1200 by the bishop Jacopo de Varagine to Oberto Doria who in 1361 gave it to Genoa; sacked in the sixteenth century by Dragut and Barbarossa, it suffered the fierce retaliation of the Genoese in 1753, whom the city tried in vain to rebel against, and then became the Capital of the Palm District in the Ligurian Republic created by Napoleon.
Visit of the town
Arriving by car from the east, follow the signs to the center and reach piazza Eroi Sanremesi where you can park, then walk up the short paved ramp on the sea side of the square that takes you to the thirteenth-century Cathedral of San Siro.
On the façade there is a strongly splayed portal, with five small columns on each side that rise to merge into the Gothic arch; from the capitals -among carved flowers, birds, lions and even elephants- keep watch the guardian wizards, which you will also find later on the side doors and in the corbels of the hanging arches along the walls. On the upper part of the portal’s jamb are carved a dove on the right and a dolphin on the left; at the base there is the stone seat.
The lunette is decorated with a mosaic dedicated to the Saint, surmounted by the stone rose window and then by the cross-shaped window; at the sides there are two mullioned windows. The attic is enriched by hanging arches that continue along the side walls, with corbels carved as guardian wizards alternating with rosettes.
On the left side wall opens the stone portal with a massive architrave dating back to the 12th century carved with a rough Agnus between two palm trees, surmounted by a quadrilobate window; at the top of the roof there is a plaque carved with two birds pecking at a rosette, while the jambs are carved at the top with a bird on the right and a tree with a rosette on the left. Guardian wizards are carved on the capitals.
To the left of the door, faced by the plaque carved with an angel with an anchor, rises the squat bell tower, original in the lower part with squared ashlars with two series of hanging arches; the structure was severed in 1753 by the Genoese who also took away the big bell, and was later rebuilt in Baroque style.
The walls are perforated each with three high splayed single-light windows, and a mullioned window opens on the side chapel of the apse; a sixteenth-century marble plaque carved with the Virgin and Child among saints decorates the portal, on which a guardian wizard in the round is watching over at the top of the roof. The interior has three wide naves divided by stone columns, of which one near the altar with an octagonal section rather than a circular one; there is preserved the altarpiece of 1578 "San Siro e santi" by Raffaello De Rossi (1548).
Leaving the cathedral take the left going around the side; after crossing the archaic architrave with the Trigram between the letters B and R at the beginning of Via Corradi at number 92, you’ll come to the widening on which to the left stands the fifteenth-century rectory with squared blocks, with disfigured mullioned windows, entirely covered in its lower part; inside it preserves the original cloister.
After passing the beautiful fountain with the monument to Andrea Carli (a worthy nineteenth-century mayor), turn right on Via Palazzo from which, after observing the marble portal with a large heraldic shield at number 22, turn left under the pointed stone arch that preserves on the right the slit and in the jambs the holes for the latches of the gate.
You’ll thus access the historic center. The oldest core of the city is called “Pigna”, and in recent times it has been the target of a recovery and enhancement plan. In "Pigna" you’ll discover, alongside traces of a noble past, also the environmental and social degradation hidden in the belly of the billionaire city of the festival and the casino.
Passing the loggia with stone ogival arches on the left you’ll pass under the second door, also an ogival stone arch, with a marble plaque of 1321 between abraded coats of arms surmounted by a Florentine lily decoration; it preserves the slit on the right and, on the upper left beyond the arch, the massive stone carved to hold the iron hinge of the door.
From there take under the vaults to the left, turning after thirty meters to observe the painting of San Sebastiano affixed under the arch, and then take the right passing the archaic house with two stone arched portals at number 24; you’ll thus come out to the open space with the round stone fountain on a central quadrangular pillar on the left.
On the left stands the Oratorio dei Dolori, with the façade decorated with partly damaged frescoes of big noble shields. Under the little portico is embedded a "ciappa" painted with the image of San Sebastiano to whom the oratory was originally consecrated, flanked by the one carved with the pierced Sacred Heart surrounded by angels; the inscription of 1642 warns that: "Under this vault it is not possible to urinate nor to leave any garbage under penalty of four liras, and everyone can accuse and will be kept secret".
Continue along Via del Pretorio, passing the 1705 overdoor with a Trigram at number 1 and the richly carved architrave with a Trigram between two shields at number 5; upon arriving to the widening, climb to the right along the brick-paved ramp and after passing the marble fountain, pass in front of the oratory of Santa Brigida, all in rough stone, with the lunette of the overdoor carved with a Trigram. On the right, on Via Umana, a plaque engraved with a Trigram is affixed above the window at number 16.
Continue to climb between decaying houses and, at the junction with an ogival arch stone portal, take the left, pass under the vault and come out in the little square with on the left the stone fountain carved as a heraldic shield; from there go up to the right under Porte di Santa Maria and continue up to the widening where you’ll take the right along the paved road. Here upstream there is the beautiful greenery of the public gardens.
Continue going around the Baroque church of San Costanzo with the marble portal with a carved angel and go down to the right along Via Riccobono; when you are almost at the end of the street under the vault take the left along Via dell'Alleanza and, passing on the right the corroded black stone portal with an aedicule at number 9, upon arriving to the widening go right under the loggia with an ogival arch along Via Romolo Moreno.
Under the loggia is a plaque carved with a Madonna at number 26; a little further upstream to the left is the niche with a stone arch that houses the fountain. Go back down Via Moreno passing the portal at number 4 with two superimposed architraves, of which the upper one is decorated with floral motifs, and the other one with a Trigram in a lozenge, and go down the street already covered up to Piazza Eroi Sanremesi.
From there, turn left back to the central Via Matteotti, of which you’ll walk a hundred meters to the east, reaching at number 143, the 16th century Borea d'Olmo palace, frescoed at the end of the seventeenth century by Merani and Carrega, which also houses the room that hosted Pope Pius VII.
Palazzo Nota is home to the Archaeological Museum which exhibits Paleolithic finds from Grotta dell’Arma, other Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age finds coming from Sanremo and from Valle Argentina (Triora), and Roman period vases and furnishings recovered in the district.
Going back westwards, at the end of the street you’ll find on the right the short ramp that leads to the casino; if you resist the temptation and go straight, you’ll arrive to the intersection on which stands the Russian church of San Basilio.
After descending to the former train station, continue eastwards, crossing the bike lane to reach the port where stands the Fortress of Santa Tecla, built by Genoa in 1755 to control the city; it currently houses cultural and heritage venues.
Go back to the car on which you can retrace the same road continuing towards the west until, having reached the traffic lights with the tennis courts on the right, you’ll take the detour to the right that in a few kilometers takes you to Coldirodi.
Entering the village, go down on the right to the parking lot from which, going up on foot and taking a right, you’ll come to the square with the Baroque oratory of Sant'Anna on the left, with its fresco in the lunette of the façade and two bell towers on the sides.
Opposite, beyond the large fountain is the Baroque parish church of San Sebastiano with a fresco on the façade; under the small loggia to the left is the entrance to the former town hall and to the Rambaldi Art Gallery, now on Via Rambaldi 52, which preserves around a hundred paintings ranging from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, a collection of prints and a rich library of five thousand volumes, all bequeathed to the Municipality by the scholar don Stefano Rambaldi in 1866.
Outside is a stone plaque that recalls how around the 1920s the town, practically depopulated by the exodus of the inhabitants towards the thriving touristic Sanremo, was occupied by southern immigrants who replaced them in the houses and in the countryside.
Particularly large is the colony of people who came from Abruzzo, who alone constitute today almost seventy percent of the population, in which several other southern regions are also well represented; the true “coldirodese” are now less than ten percent, more or less fifty people altogether.
The plaque (probably unique if not in Italy certainly in Liguria) emphasizes "the tenacity and effort of the workers who came here from every region of Italy to make the lands and the crops more beautiful, and who were welcomed and appreciated by the locals"; the motto of the nearby sundial: "SOL LUCET OMMNIBUS" ("the sun shines for everyone") reaffirms the openness of the natives towards "foreigners".
If from the church you cross the square again towards the oratory and continue, after a few hundred meters you’ll encounter the ramp on the right that leads to the sanctuary of Madonna Pellegrina, which replaced on the panoramic square the medieval Pos Pin castle, destroyed in 1316. If instead you walk around the church on its right side and go along Via Castello, upon arriving to the end of the street at the widening with a fountain you’ll find on the right the house that replaced the castle, flanked by a tower that was also widely manipulated.
A plaque commemorates the foundation of the town, remembering that around the year one thousand, groups of scattered families built the castle and the tower to defend against piracy, creating the original center of "Colla".
Go back down to the Aurelia and turn in the direction of Ospedaletti.