Santa Margherita Ligure
Santa Margherita has the railway station, the hospital, the fishing fleet and the affordable rooms that its famous neighbour two kilometres away does not, and its palm-lined seafront was built for Belle Époque visitors who came to stay for months. Base yourself here and travel to Portofino by boat or on the coastal footpath, which takes forty minutes and passes above water no road ever sees.
Why go
The base that makes Portofino affordable — the same bay, two kilometres and a fraction of the price. A Belle Époque seafront — palm-lined, built for guests who came for the season, not the weekend. The coastal path — forty minutes on foot to Portofino above water no road ever sees. A working fishing port — the boats land at dawn and the fish goes straight to the market.
The character
Santa Margherita has everything its famous neighbour does not: a railway station, a hospital, a supermarket, a school and roughly nine thousand residents who live here all year. It grew as a fishing and coral-diving town — Ligurian boats worked the coral banks off Sardinia and North Africa for centuries — and then, in the late nineteenth century, as a winter resort for northern Europeans who arrived by the new railway and stayed for months.
That is why the seafront is Belle Époque and the back streets are Ligurian: tall narrow houses painted with trompe-l'œil windows and balustrades, a technique perfected here when paint was cheaper than stone carving. The town's modern role is essentially logistical, and it plays it with good humour: everyone knows visitors come for Portofino, and everyone knows the sensible ones sleep here. What they get in exchange is a real town, with a market on Fridays and restaurants that do not price for yachts.
Places of character
The trompe-l'œil façades — look up on Via Palestro and Piazza Caprera; almost none of the ornament is real. Villa Durazzo — a seventeenth-century villa with an Italian garden above the town, free to walk. The fish market at the port — early, small, and the reason the local restaurants are good. The coastal path to Portofino — via Paraggi, forty minutes, with the bay below and no traffic. Basilica di Santa Margherita d'Antiochia — extravagantly baroque inside, unexpectedly so from the street. San Fruttuoso — the abbey in a cove, reachable by boat from here as easily as from Portofino.
The way to do it
Sleep here and day-trip everywhere: Portofino on foot or by boat, Camogli by train in six minutes, the Cinque Terre in an hour. Take the boat at least once rather than the path. And eat where the fishing boats land — the difference between Santa Margherita's prices and Portofino's is roughly the price of the postcard.
One perfect day
Coffee on the seafront while the fishing boats come in. Walk the coastal path to Portofino before ten, through Paraggi with its green water, arriving as the piazzetta is still setting up. Boat from Portofino to San Fruttuoso for the abbey and a swim off the rocks. Back to Santa Margherita for a late lunch of trofie al pesto and a carafe of Vermentino. Afternoon in the Villa Durazzo garden with a book, then a swim from the town beach. Aperitivo on the harbour at seven, dinner of the morning's fish, and a walk under the palms when the Belle Époque hotels light up.
Grand hotels
Imperiale Palace — 1889, where the Treaty of Rapallo was signed in 1922; terraced gardens down to the sea. Grand Hotel Miramare — 1903, from whose lawn Marconi transmitted the first radio signals over water in 1933.
When to go
Best expression: May and September — warm sea, working town, the coastal path comfortable. Consider: October, when the light on the bay is at its best and the hotels drop their rates. Avoid if possible: August weekends, when the Portofino road jams and the path fills.
The frame
Ideal stay 3 nights · Minimum 2 nights · Best arrival train from Genoa, 35 minutes · Airport GOA, 40 km · Walkability excellent and flat along the front · Best without a car yes — and a car is a liability here