Monterosso al Mare

The oldest village on record — first noted in 1056, though people sheltered here as far back as the 7th century. It is really two in one: the medieval old town and the newer quarter of Fegina, joined by a tunnel beneath the San Cristoforo headland.

Its long pebble beach, lemon groves and pale white wine give it an easy, sun-warmed calm. Look for Il Gigante — a fourteen-metre Neptune from 1910 who once bore a shell-shaped seaside terrace on his shoulders. Scarred by wartime bombing and winter storms, he still braces the cliff at the end of the beach.

Monterosso is Ghibli’s home port. Coming in from the sea, the first landmark is the Torre Aurora, the sixteenth-century Genoese watchtower on the headland that splits the old town from Fegina. This is the village of anchovies — fished at night by lamplight and salted here since the Middle Ages, called pan du mä, the bread of the sea. It is a village of poets, too: Eugenio Montale spent his summers at Fegina, and the seascape of Ossi di seppia is exactly the one you are looking at.