Alassio discovery guide

Because an English general bought a hillside here in 1876, and Alassio has lived off foreign winters since.

The draw is a sheltered beach, a wall of autographs and two record collections. A three-kilometre beach of fine sand curves between two capes. The Muretto carries about a thousand ceramic tiles, the first three cemented on illegally at night in 1953. And the Giardini di Villa della Pergola hold Italy's most important wisteria collection and Europe's largest agapanthus collection.

The friction is that nothing is walk-up and the motorway does not stop. The comune names two A10 exits and neither is Alassio. The gardens admit visitors only on a booked guided visit, four slots a day. Summer peaks reach 80,000 in a town of 9,874.

The smart way is to come out of the summer entirely. Alassio made its name as a winter curative station: a hill belt blocks the north wind and frost is rare. Book wisteria in March or agapanthus in June, and ask at check-in for the free TPL Tourist Card Bus.

Alassio is the rare Italian beach town with a real case for coming in winter — it was a curative and thermal station before it was a lido, because a belt of hills blocks the cold air from the north and temperatures rarely fall below zero.

December to February: the season the town was invented for. Alassio Christmas Town runs through December alongside the Shopping dei Sogni competition; on 1 January a light show plays over the gulf. February brings Alassio a San Valentino and the Saldi in love sales — the town trades hard on being the home of a wall nicknamed the muretto dell'amore. Snow falls occasionally on Colle di Vegliasco and monte Tirasso; in the town it is rare.

March and April: the wisteria, the bikes and the bocce. The Giardini di Villa della Pergola open every day from 20 March, and March and April are the wisteria months — about forty varieties, the most important collection in Italy. The Granfondo del Muretto mountain-bike race is in March; April brings the Targa d'Oro, the most awaited date in the national bocce calendar, run here every year since 1954, plus Flauer Alassio and the Sagra delle Biscette up in the hills.

May: the month the English get their own festival. Alassio e gli inglesi fills May with music, culture and Old England. Note that the dog ban on the sands begins on 1 May and runs to 30 September, and the tourist tax applies from 1 April to 31 October.

June and July: the agapanthus, and the town filling up. June and July are the agapanthus months at the gardens — more than five hundred species, the largest collection in Europe. The Ligyes Alassio Genova Cultura Fest runs June to August and Alassio Summer Town June to September.

August: the peak, and the two best food days of the year. This is when the comune records peaks of up to 80,000 people. If you come anyway, come for the Sagra della ventre — tuna stomach cooked to the tonnarotti recipe of Moglio — for Alassio castelli di sabbia, and for the Ferragosto fireworks over the gulf on 15 August.

September to November: the long, warm tail. The gardens are still flowering — hibiscus, oleanders, lantanas, plumbago and Dahlia imperialis right through to November — and September carries the centolibri literary prizes, Un autore per l'Europa and Un editore per l'Europa. The gardens warn, in their own words, that every season is different: a cold spring delays the early flowerings and a hot one brings them forward.

The old town is one lane, the hill is the other half of the visit, and the two take about a day between them.

Walk the Budello end to end

The carruggio that runs the length of the old town is officially Piazza XX Settembre and universally the Budello — the gut. Houses of the fifteen- and sixteen-hundreds stand on either side, and the comune's own description calls it the town's pulsing heart and an open-air shopping centre. It has two ends: Borgo Coscia towards Laigueglia, and Piazza Partigiani towards Albenga. Side exits run either up to corso Dante Alighieri or straight down to the sand.

Find the Muretto, and then the other one

On corso Dante Alighieri, opposite the Caffe Roma and beside the Charlie Chaplin playground, about a thousand ceramic tiles of autographs cover a stone wall, with Eros Pellini's bronze Innamorati above them. At the far end of the same street, in the giardini Morteo, the Muretto dei Cani — inaugurated on 25 March 2013 by the American artist Sandra Chace — carries some 500 tiles of animals, with a section for guide dogs.

Go into Sant'Ambrogio

The parish church since 1507, with a Renaissance facade and a Romanesque-Gothic bell tower of the fourteenth century left from the building before it. Inside are works by the Genoese seventeenth century: Bernardo Castello and Giovanni Andrea De Ferrari.

Book the gardens, and book them for a flowering

The Giardini di Villa della Pergola are guided visit only — four slots a day at 09:30, 11:30, 15:00 and 17:00, about 80 minutes, tickets online in advance. Come in March or April for the wisteria, the most important collection in Italy; in June or July for the agapanthus, the largest in Europe. Ten minutes on foot from the station, through the underpass at Viale Gibb 30.

Take the seafront in both directions

One way as far as the Cappelletta — the votive chapel of 1929 to those lost at sea, on a rocky spur by the Luca Ferrari marina — and the Porto Turistico. The other way towards Laigueglia. Boat excursions leave the marina for the isola Gallinara, for bio-snorkelling and for cetacean watching; none of them lands.

Climb, for a view or for a fresco

Up monte Tirasso (587 m) to the twelfth-century sanctuary of Nostra Signora della Guardia, which holds a large marble Madonna and looks down over the whole gulf. Or up to Solva, on the ridge towards Albenga, whose church keeps fifteenth-century frescoes of the pains of hell. Both frazioni are on a bus: 99 to Solva, 92 to Moglio.

Buy the biscuits and come on a Saturday

The baci di Alassio date from 1910, invented by the pastry chef Rinaldo Balzola as a present for the new foreign visitors, and carry the comune's own De.C.O. mark. The weekly market fills Piazza Paccini and Via Diaz every Saturday from 8:00 to 13:00, with 76 stalls.

This is a town two foreign habits built: an English winter and an Italian August. The hills above the beach carry villas that were for the most part the property of English citizens, and the encyclopaedia records that Alassio is often considered a sort of "English colony". What that colony left is still in use: an Anglican church, the Hanbury tennis club founded in 1923, free parking on streets called Viale Daniel Hanbury and Viale Gibb, and two chemists' shops still trading as the Farmacia Inglese and the Farmacia Angloamericana.

The English Library is the measurable form of it. Founded in 1875 by the Anglican pastor John Hayes, built outside the Anglican church so that parishioners going home could leave behind the books they did not want to carry, it is second in Italy for the number and importance of its English-language volumes, surpassed only by the English library of Florence. The civic library "Renzo Deaglio" on piazza Airaldi e Durante inherited the collection of the former Anglican church.

Before the English, this was a town of sailors, and the ratio proves it. In 1834 Alassio had 6,300 inhabitants, of whom more than 2,000 were sailors. Navigation and maritime commerce gave the town a significant standing among Ligurian localities in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries; in 1528 its captains armed 18 galleons for Andrea Doria, and then had to repel the French reprisal in their own roadstead, borgo by borgo. Fishing is the only one of those trades still practised.

The dialect is going, and the frazioni are where it survives. Arascin — Ligurian of Alassio, in the Albenganese western Ligurian group — has progressively given way to Genoese in the town, but persists in a fairly archaic form in the hill villages, where the cadence changes from frazione to frazione. It is still taught through courses run by associations such as the Associazione Vecchia Alassio.

Its emblems are a wall and a biscuit, and both were invented for visitors. The Muretto grew out of a bar owner's autograph collection; the baci di Alassio were invented in 1910 as a gastronomic gift for the Germans and English who had just discovered the place. Gabriele d'Annunzio called the baci the sweets of kindness. The town has been nicknamed both the Town of the Muretto and the Town of Chocolate.

And painters keep turning up. Mario Berrino, who made the Muretto, and Luciano Lanati were both from here. The seventeenth-century palazzo Morteo holds some twenty canvases by Carlo Levi, mostly of the hills behind the town. The Richard West Memorial Gallery is devoted to the Dublin-born Irish painter Richard Whateley West. And the German painter Felix Nussbaum, who died at Auschwitz in 1944, stayed here in 1934.

The pressure here is seasonal and it is measurable. Alassio has 9,874 residents and the comune records summer peaks of up to 80,000 people. It is not a new problem: in 1938 the town counted 657,586 tourists across the year, of whom 286,000 were foreign, against a resident population that had only just passed 8,000. The single most useful decision a visitor can make is to come in a month that is not August.

The dog rule has dates and they are not negotiable. During the bathing season, from 1 May to 30 September, dogs may not be taken on to the sands at any hour, night included. Outside that window they are allowed. There is a fenced exercise area in the Parco di Villa Fiske, up in the hills on Via Costa Lupara, and some private beach clubs are dog friendly.

The island is a nature reserve and you cannot set foot on it. The isola Gallinara belongs to the neighbouring comune of Albenga and constitutes a regional nature reserve; its unreachable cliffs hold one of the largest yellow-legged gull colonies in the Ligurian Sea and its seabeds carry Posidonia oceanica. The comune states plainly that it is not visitable and that every boat excursion circumnavigates it without landing. Take the trip; do not ask to go ashore.

The gardens are a conservation site with rules to match. The Giardini di Villa della Pergola refuse domestic animals of any size, explicitly to protect rare plants and local fauna; they refuse rucksacks and bulky bags, which go in a paid cloakroom; they require closed, comfortable shoes; and they have no visitor parking at all, with vehicles barred both inside the grounds and on the access road.

Leave the car at the station and use what is published. TPL line 40 runs the coast from Andora to Finale Ligure every 30 minutes, day and evening, and lines 92 and 99 climb to the hill frazioni of Moglio and Solva. Ask for the TPL Tourist Card Bus at check-in: it is free, digital, activated through the La mia Liguria app, and covers the province's buses for seven days.

Walk the hills rather than driving them. The paths above the town are old mule tracks used by shepherds and woodcutters, including the via Julia Augusta towards Albenga and the sentiero del rosmarino at 200 metres, which runs to Laigueglia. The hills are still worked: olive groves, small vineyards and the casone — dry-stone shepherds' shelters — on the slopes of monte Pisciavino.

Alassio publishes more of its prices than most Ligurian resorts, and the numbers are specific.

The tourist tax runs 1 April to 31 October and is capped. It applies in every accommodation structure and tourist-use apartment, at between €0.70 and €2.00 per person per night depending on the type and classification of the property — and for no more than five consecutive nights in the same place, which is the part most visitors do not know. Children under 12 are exempt, as are coach drivers, tour escorts with groups of at least 20, and disabled and non-self-sufficient guests.

Parking is the biggest avoidable cost. Blue-line spaces are €1.80 an hour, payable at the meter in cash or by card or through the Easypark, Paybyphone and Cicero apps, with the charged hours varying by season and zone. White-line spaces are free, and the comune names where to find them: Viale Daniel Hanbury and Via Adelasia in the former-hospital zone, Corso Europa and via G. B. Pera. Watch the disc-time zones. Disabled drivers who find the reserved bays taken may use blue-line spaces free on display of a valid CUDE.

The one paid attraction has a full published tariff. The Giardini di Villa della Pergola charge €19 full, €15 reduced and €9 for children of 6 to 14; under-6s are free. The reduced rate covers FAI and ADSI members, students to 19 and university students to 25, disabled visitors at any percentage of invalidity from 0 to 99 — and, unusually, residents of Alassio or Albenga on production of a document. Free entry for 100% disabled visitors with a companion, and for members of the Royal Horticultural Society, which follows from the gardens becoming an RHS Partner Garden in 2025 and is worth a British visitor carrying the card for.

Public transport can be free for a week. The TPL Tourist Card Bus is handed over at check-in, activated through the La mia Liguria app with a QR code from the property, and gives seven days of free travel on the public buses of the whole province of Savona — which includes the line 40 coast service. The separate Experience Tourist Card is a discount card, not an inclusive one: reductions on museums, excursions and hire, plus bookable activities from guided hill treks to birdwatching and stargazing. Wave walking is listed from €15.

Two absences to plan around. There is no currency exchange office in Alassio — the comune advises asking at your hotel reception — and no camper area or campsite anywhere in the comune. The Saturday market in Piazza Paccini and Via Diaz, 8:00 to 13:00 with 76 stalls, is the cheapest food in town, and the largest free beach is beyond the L. Ferrari marina.