Portofino

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.
At a short distance, easy to reach thanks to a walking trail in the middle of the Maquis
or with a boat service, there is the San Fruttuoso bay,
with the homonymous abbey dating back to1000.