Off to the Italian Riviera: MOST VISITORS to the Côte d'Azur, in France, venture no farther east than the Italian border town of Ventimiglia, for its market and cheap drink. But take a bus a few more kilometres and you'll find the smaller, prettier 15th-century Ligurian town of Bordighera.
My great-grandparents were Ligurian. Cousin Lina regularly escaped over the Bordighera convent wall to hitch a lift back with a farmer returning from market to her hilltop village on the other side of San Remo. This greenhouse- covered coast is known as the Riviera dei Fiori, or Riviera of the Flowers; San Remo supplies the blooms for Vienna’s annual New Year’s Day concert.
Bordighera's daily covered market is on Piazza Garibaldi; the weekly Thursday market runs along Lungomare Argentina, between the railway line and the Ligurian Sea. It is a joy; you can lunch afterwards at a seafront restaurant; fish is the thing: insalata tiepida di polpo(warm octopus salad), spaghetti con acciughe fresche(spaghetti with fresh anchovies), filetto di orata(fillet of sea bream).
Walk up to the old town; from Porta della Maddalena you have cracking views over the marina, as did the 19th-century French architect Charles Garnier from his villa below. Villa Garnier (above) is home to the Sisters of St Joseph of Aosta. The same order of nuns tried and tested by Cousin Lina? I don’t know – but I do know they’ll show you around by appointment.
Bordighera and its environs – Borghetto San Nicolò, where the town’s 32 founding families lived; medieval Vallebona; the fortified village of Seborga – is a delightful destination
in its own right. A continuation of the coast, certainly, but the Riviera dei Fiori does differ from the French Riviera. It’s, well, wonderfully Italian.
www.bordighera.it
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