Sanremo

Sanremo is the resort everyone has heard of and almost nobody looks at properly. The seafront carries the famous machinery — the Liberty-era casino of 1905, the palm promenade, the Ariston theatre that hosts the Festival every February — and most visitors never leave it. One minute uphill begins La Pigna, the medieval town that has curled around its hill in concentric lanes since about the year 1000: covered alleys, stepped passageways, small quiet squares, washing strung between terraced houses. It is one of the largest and least-performed old towns on the Riviera, and it sits directly above one of Italy's busiest musical addresses.

The town also carries this platform's favourite kind of infrastructure: a railway turned into a public path. When the coastal line to Genoa moved inland into a tunnel in 2001, the old seaside corridor was not abandoned — it became a 24-kilometre car-free cycling and walking path from Ospedaletti to San Lorenzo al Mare, straight through Sanremo, old rail tunnels included. The Riviera di Ponente recycled its own railway; that alone earns it a place here.

April to June and September to October are the generous windows: warm enough for the coast path, cool enough for La Pigna's climbs, with the flower terraces above town at their best in spring. March brings the Milan–Sanremo cycling classic through the streets. High summer is busy in the Italian seaside way — full beaches, full restaurants — though the crowds thin sharply the moment you step uphill. One week to avoid unless you are coming for it: Festival week in February, when the town books out entirely and rates triple.

Train-first, easily. Sanremo sits on the Ventimiglia–Genoa line with regional trains throughout the day: about fifteen minutes from Ventimiglia, where the French TER from Nice terminates, and a little over two hours from Genoa. The station itself is a curiosity — an underground through-station in the 2001 inland tunnel, a long escalator ride below the town. From Nice the whole journey is around an hour and a half with the single change at Ventimiglia. No car is needed for the town, the coast path or the bus-reached villages behind it.

The grand anchor is the Royal Hotel Sanremo, the 19th-century institution above the seafront, for those treating the town as the occasion (verify current rates and season). Otherwise the honest pattern is small hotels and B&Bs between the centre and the station and a growing number of rooms inside La Pigna itself — sleeping in the old town is the move that changes the visit. Book well ahead for February (Festival week) and mid-March (Milan–Sanremo weekend); the rest of the year Sanremo has more beds than the Riviera's reputation suggests.

Order sardenaira without thinking twice: Sanremo's own take on the tomato-topped focaccia of the Ponente, laid with anchovies, taggiasca olives, garlic and capers, sold by the slice from bakeries all over town. The gambero rosso di Sanremo — the local red prawn, landed by the town's own fleet — is the luxury end of the same harbour, served raw or barely touched in the better kitchens. Around them sits the western-Ligurian repertoire: brandacujun (whipped stockfish and potato), coniglio alla ligure, and taggiasca olive oil from Taggia, one valley east. The covered Mercato Annonario is the morning stop for all of it.

Climb La Pigna first, without a route: enter at the fourteenth-century Porta di Santo Stefano, let the covered lanes and rivolte carry you upward past Piazza dei Dolori and San Giuseppe, and come out at the seventeenth-century Sanctuary of the Madonna della Costa, where the whole coast opens below. Then ride the old railway: rent a bike by the path and take the 24 km of traffic-free coast toward Ospedaletti or San Lorenzo al Mare, through the Capo Nero tunnel with its Milan–Sanremo memorial lighting.

Villa Nobel, on the eastern seafront, is where Alfred Nobel spent his last years and died in 1896; house and garden are kept as a museum (check current opening). The onion domes near the station belong to the Russian Orthodox church of 1913, a leftover of the winters when the Riviera spoke Russian. And take the short bus ride up to Bussana Vecchia: the village destroyed by the 1887 earthquake and resettled by artists from the 1960s onward, ruins and studios grown into one another — fragile, privately rebuilt, and best visited with money for the makers rather than just a camera.

• Language: Italian; French widely understood this close to the border, English in hotels and along the front
• Currency: euro
• Plug: European type C/F/L
• Money: ATMs and card acceptance are city-standard; cash useful in La Pigna's smaller bars and at the market
• Mobile: Coverage is good throughout the town and along the coast path
• Good to know: Festival week in February and the Milan–Sanremo weekend in March are the two dates that fill the town — book around them or lean into them
• Nearest hospital: Ospedale di Sanremo, in the upper town