Liguria Events

Liguria’s calendar is tied to the sea: patron saints who protected sailors, rowing races between neighbourhoods, and one very large boat show. Most are single days, which makes them easy to catch and easy to miss.

The Palio del Golfo, La Spezia

First Sunday of August. Thirteen boroughs around the gulf race fixed-seat rowing boats, with crews that train all year and rivalries older than most people watching. The waterfront fills, and the days before carry the qualifying heats.

Genoa in June and September

The twenty-fourth of June is the feast of San Giovanni Battista, the city’s patron saint, marked with a procession through the old town. In September the Salone Nautico fills the waterfront with one of the Mediterranean’s largest boat shows, and hotel prices across the city move with it. The Rolli Days open the private palaces to the public over a weekend, usually twice a year in spring and autumn.

Portovenere’s Madonna Bianca

The seventeenth of August. The village turns off its electric light and marks the cliffs, the castle and the waterfront with thousands of small flames, with a procession by sea. It runs one night a year.

Village festivals along the coast

Monterosso in the Cinque Terre Region holds a lemon festival in May and an anchovy one in September, both built around what the village actually produces. Noli races its own boroughs by boat in September. These are small, cheap and run by the towns themselves.

Accommodation across the whole coast is tightest in July and August, and the Salone Nautico does the same to Genoa in September. The festivals are worth planning around; the summer squeeze is worth planning away from.