The strip of coastline between Monte di Portofino and Punta Manara preserves an ancient tradition of seaside villages devoted to hospitality.
Santa Margherita and Rapallo with their Art Nouveau villas and exclusive harbours, Camogli with its ancient seafaring tradition,
Zoagli with its ancient silk mills, Chiavari and Sestri Levante with their tourist facilities and shopping offer a wide range of activities
perfectly combined with a scenic beauty that has enchanted visitors for centuries.
The old “Portus Delphini”, mentioned by Plinius, during the Roman times offered shelter to the ships sailing along the coast.
The territory, first included in the belongings of the monks of San Fruttuoso Abbey,
then to the ones of the Republic of Genoa,
owes its fortune to the beauty of the town,
which first enchanted the rich Genoese Bourgeoisie of the 19th Century
and after that writers and intellectuals, mostly of them foreign.
“The yacht… glides at a short distance from the rocks… and now… we discover suddenly an hidden bay…
a small village, Portofino, stretches along this calm basin like a moon arch…
surrounded by e green and fresh wood… I have never felt the same feeling I had when I entered in this bay…"
So Guy de Maupassant wrote in 1889, docking with his yacht “Bel Ami” in the place that the international
Jet Set some years later elected as residence.
Still nowadays the typical “piazzetta” is animated by very and not very important people,
struck by the beauty of this corner o Liguria.
