What to See in Sanremo: Places of Interest in the City of Flowers

Splendid and renowned Ligurian resort, Sanremo is largely associated with the annual edition of the Italian Song Festival held in this location since the first half of the 20th century. But Sanremo is a well-known holiday resort in Liguria, in the province of Imperia, not far from neighboring France. Let’s see what to see and what to do in Sanremo.

What to see and do in Sanremo

1 Walk along the avenues and the promenade

The avenues of Sanremo invite you to stroll among palm trees and very well-kept gardens. The Marsiglia park features exotic plants and the Riviera Palace Hotel houses the Tourism office. The promenade with its palm trees of “the city of flowers” recalls famous resorts of the French Riviera, with its gardens and pretty villas that show a certain lifestyle not exactly common. If you are looking for parking in Sanremo, you can park right on the Nations promenade, by the sea or in Corso Imperatrice.

2 The Sanremo casino

Sanremo is a place that hosts one of the few casinos located in Italy. The casino was opened in 1905 and then expanded during the following years. It is open every day and is located at the beginning of Corso Matteotti.

3 The Ariston Theatre

The Ariston Theatre in Sanremo is (perhaps) one of the most famous in Italy thanks to the annual editions (usually in February) of the Italian song Festival known as the “Sanremo Festival”. The Ariston Theatre is located along Corso Matteotti and has an old-style facade (Art Deco) with its century of life (1924). Since 1977 it has been the permanent venue of the singing event which previously took place at the casino in certainly more cramped spaces compared to the theatre.

4 La Pigna

Sanremo encloses a lovely medieval town among some bastions. This is “La Pigna.” It is an absolutely must-see place with streets, squares, fountains all dated to the medieval period and houses still inhabited. Among the most beautiful squares is “Piazza dei Dolori” but the whole area lends itself to a pleasant walk among palaces and cafes that echo times gone by.

The Villas of Sanremo

5 Villa Nobel

Villa Nobel is a magnificent nineteenth-century building that rises in eclectic style to the east of the town along corso Cavallotti. Its history began at the end of 1870, when the pharmacist from Rivoli Pietro Vacchieri had an elegant small building constructed based on a project by Filippo Grossi, appreciated “for the swiftness and elegance of its forms.” The general appearance of the villa, surrounded by a beautiful park of precious plants that extended to the sea, animated by canopies and “French-style” roofs, was anything but unpleasant. Nobel, who purchased it on April 25, 1891, was also attracted by the availability of a large plot of land (6,099 square meters), crossed by two level crossings, equipped with gas lamps and two wells with related pumps, as well as a series of small buildings and temporary structures. Nobel lived there alone for 6 years (1890-1896). The renovation works, entrusted in 1892 to the architect Pio Soli, did not overturn the original design but involved the addition of a floor and changes to the central roofs and turrets. In the attic, windows were opened alternating with frescoed metopes. Upon the death of the Swedish scientist in 1897, the villa passed to Max Adolphe Philipp, Director of the German Dynamite Company, and was then sold again. In 1969 it was sold to the Sanremo Autonomous Board for Stay and Tourism, which used it for cultural and tourist events, followed by the final ownership transfer in 1973 to the Province of Imperia, which in the 1980s entrusted the permanent management to the Nobel Foundation, supervised by engineer Strandh, Director of the Stockholm Museum of Technology. Since 1993, new restoration and arrangement work transformed it into a museum.

6 Villa Ormond

It was 1875 when the Swiss entrepreneur Michel Louis Ormond, head of a cigar factory in Vevey and a politician who loved and studied history and the arts, became the owner of Villa Rambaldi, in the center of a large estate in the eastern part of Sanremo. After marrying the French poet Marie Margherite Renet in Paris in 1866, the frail health conditions of his wife prompted Michel Louis Ormond to seek a residence in the Riviera. When a violent earthquake struck the western Ligurian area on February 25, 1887, the Ormond residence suffered serious damage, prompting the Swiss family to build a new building: after two years of work (1889), the result was the elegant Villa Ormond, designed by the Swiss architect who had created the Geneva Opera House and many villas for the Swiss high society. The villa hosted illustrious guests such as the Princes of Prussia, the Duke of Aosta, and the Empress Elisabeth of Austria. After the deaths of Michel Louis Ormond (1901) and Marie Margherite (1925), the Ormond property was put up for sale, and it was the Municipality of Sanremo that completed the purchase in 1930 for three million lire. Thanks to the then mayor, Pietro Agosti, the park was opened to the public, and the large fountain designed by Agosti himself and the exhibition pavilion were built. Today, a wing of the villa houses the International Institute of Humanitarian Law, while the villa is often used as the venue for international flower shows or tourism events.

7 Roman Villa of Bussana

The remains of the Roman villa of Bussana are located near the mouth of the Armea stream, in the Capo Marine area. In ancient times, the villa was arranged along the probable route of the Via Julia Augusta or on a secondary road connected to it. It cannot be ruled out that the villa was originally much larger than what is visible and that it included, besides the production area, also a residential part, although the latter has not been preserved. This would not therefore be a simple rustic villa but a true extra-urban residence, equipped to accommodate the owner for stays of varying lengths. Further evidence for this interpretation is the fairly refined technique found in the construction of the walls: the cement work with facing in small rectangular blocks of limestone and sandstone (petit appareil).

Except for a kiln for baking bricks and tiles and a water reservoir, it is difficult to determine the function of the preserved rooms since most do not present particular features that could document the performance of specific activities, so general functional uses such as warehouses or granaries, or others connected to domestic activities can be assumed. Outside the perimeter walls of the villa and thus possibly completely unrelated to it, there stands a tomb of quadrangular shape on the outside and semicircular on the inside, designed to create a large apse niche where the commemorative statue of the deceased or that of a deity could be placed. The wall construction technique is similar to that used for the villa, but the stone blocks alternate with rows of bricks. Ceramic materials found in the kiln excavation, along with the discovery of coins and inscriptions, allow dating the construction of the villa and tomb between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

8 Roman Villa of the Foce

The remains of the Roman villa of the Foce are located near the monumental cemetery of Sanremo, close to the sea outlet of the Rio Foce. The site has been known since the seventeenth century, as local scholars have documented. According to unfounded hypotheses, which however were given credit until the early twentieth century, the villa was identified as Villa Matuciana, a name derived from a toponym that recalls the main center of this area in Roman times, probably identifiable as the urban area of Sanremo. Following the report of honorary inspector engineer P. Agosti in 1925, the first archaeological investigations began, conducted by archeologist P. Barocelli, who uncovered some rooms correctly recognized as part of a thermal complex belonging to a villa. Other remains, perhaps also belonging to this same building, were identified farther west near the San Bernardo stream, while the existence of submerged remains of the villa was only hypothesized.

Three rooms, those with the highest preserved walls today, had perhaps already been reused since the seventeenth century for the construction of a rural house. Excavations and research on the villa were resumed by N. Lamboglia in 1937 and continued in 1962-63, again under Lamboglia, after the area of the villa was acquired by the Ministry and the Municipality of Sanremo. The rural house was thus demolished, and a series of other rooms came to light. More recently, underwater investigations carried out by the Superintendence have confirmed that the presumed submerged ruins in the sea stretch in front of the villa are actually natural rocky outcrops.

The Foce villa most likely belongs to the type of maritime villas, large extra-urban residences located near the sea. Currently, 12 rooms are visible: the entire villa bath (balneum), intended for the exclusive use of the owner; the resting rooms overlooking the open space in front, possibly treated as a garden; a service room connected to the functioning of the baths; the uncovered courtyard; the latrine. In some bath rooms, various elements of the heating system have been preserved. At the current state of research, it is possible to propose an initial dating of the villa to the 1st century AD based on the type of heating systems and ceramic finds, which are also consistent with the construction technique of cement work with facing in small rectangular blocks of sandstone and limestone (petit appareil) used for the construction. The ceramic finds also testify to the continued use of this building until the 5th-6th centuries AD.

Sanremo’s Cultural Places

9 Palazzo Borea D’Olmo

Palazzo Borea d’Olmo is one of the most important Baroque buildings in western Liguria. It was built in several phases starting from a late medieval core and took its current form in the full Baroque period, between the 17th and 18th centuries. The building has been continuously inhabited by members of the Borea d’Olmo family, of Venetian origins and ancient lineage, who chose it as their private residence and from whom it took its name. After the gradual sale of the surrounding garden areas, it currently faces directly south onto Via Matteotti, the city’s main street.

The facades are characterized by a large Renaissance-style cornice that harmonizes with Baroque-Mannerist decoration. On the south and west facades, two beautiful marble portals can be seen (with original wooden doors, lined with iron riveted plates) surmounted by marble statues of the “Virgin with Child” (front) and “St. John the Baptist” (side on Via Cavour), works by the Florentine artist Fra Giovanni da Montorsoli (1507-1563), in his youth the favored pupil and assistant of Michelangelo and one of the sculptors of the Doria workshop, active in the Palazzo del Principe in Genoa. The monumental atrium, in pure Genoese style, features marble columns and balustrades, a short staircase, and a harmonious play of vaults.

Inside, the rooms housing the Museum on the second floor are enriched by frescoes and decorative inserts attributed to the painter Maurizio Carrega (1737 – 1818). The vaults of the halls bear late 17th-century frescoes by Giovanni Battista Merano. Noteworthy inside is a tiny chapel with a marble altar, featuring a statue of the Immaculate Virgin attributed to the sculptor Giacomo Antonio Ponsonelli. The Palazzo has shared for many centuries the vicissitudes of local history. It hosted a long series of Princes, sovereigns, and illustrious men: from Queen Elizabeth of Spain, to King Charles Emmanuel III, to the painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, to Pope Pius VII, to Prince Philip of Edinburgh.

10 Sanremo Civic Museum

The Civic Museum, initially founded as an Archaeological Museum, is housed on the second floor of Palazzo Borea d’Olmo, in the splendid rooms of the prestigious residence, enriched by works by Bernardo Strozzi, Giovanni Battista Merano, Maurizio Carrega. Since 1988, it has been divided into three distinct sections: archaeological, artistic (painting gallery), and historical (collection of Garibaldi relics).

The archaeological section, the most established, founded in 1972 and supported by the permanent educational exhibition “Man and the Origin of Civilization in Liguria,” gathers the oldest evidence found in the Sanremo territory and its surroundings, from the Paleolithic and Bronze Age up to the Roman period. The Pinacoteca houses a valuable collection of paintings and sculptures from bequests and acquisitions. The most representative is the collection of paintings and prints donated by the poet Renzo Laurano, pseudonym of Luigi Asquasciati (1909-1986), featuring landscapes, portraits, and religious subjects from the 17th century to the early 20th century, by D. Fiasella, C. Giuseppe Ratti, G Grosso. Recently created is the room dedicated to artists active between the 19th and 20th centuries, from Edward Lear to Antonio Discovolo and Antonio Rubino. The exhibition is completed by a series of sculptures from early 20th-century authors (Vincenzo and Nello Pasquali, Franco Bargiggia) and a room dedicated to contemporary art (paintings by Cesi Amoretti, Giannetto Fieschi, etc.). In the Stucco Room, the historical section displays testimonies of the city’s history and an important collection of Garibaldi relics belonging to the English noblewoman Caroline Phillipson.

11 Scientific Collection

The scientific collection of ancient physics and geodesy instruments was studied, cataloged on computer support, and recovered with the help of the Physics Museum of the D.I.F.I. – University of Genoa (during 2006-2007), as part of the project for safeguarding and enhancing the historical-scientific instruments existing at schools and other cultural institutions in Liguria, supported and financed by the Liguria region (Department of Culture). Ninety-four instruments were cataloged. Most of the instruments date from the second half to the end of the 19th century. Through the enhancement of this heritage, the I.I.S. “Colombo” of Sanremo aims to organize initiatives for the dissemination of scientific culture, especially aimed at young people and secondary school students of western Liguria. The collection also includes mineralogical collections, natural science specimens, and some anatomical models.

12 Rambaldi Art Gallery, Villa Luca

Established in 1866, the Rambaldi Collection, comprising paintings and the library, originated from the bequest of the library and print collection that the priest Paolo Stefano Rambaldi (1803-1865) left upon his death to his native town of Colla, now Coldirodi, a district of the Municipality of Sanremo. Currently, the Art Gallery consists of about a hundred paintings, from the 15th to the 19th century.

Among them stand out the Madonna with Child attributed to Lorenzo di Credi (Verrocchio’s workshop), the Holy Family by Frà Bartolomeo della Porta, in addition to fine paintings by Aurelio Lomi, Salvator Rosa, Michele Rocca, Jacopo Ligozzi, and numerous other examples of the major Italian painting schools. The collection is closely connected to the social and cultural context of 19th-century Florence, where Rambaldi was for almost ten years, until 1849, rector of the Archiepiscopal Major Seminary. The priest’s taste was not entirely devoid of interest in more recent authors still linked to classical canons such as Anton Raphael Mengs and Antonio Morghen, and authors with a classical style taste such as the Hungarian Karoly Marko the Elder.

Attached to the painting gallery, the Library preserves more than five thousand volumes, including precious incunabula, 16th-century prints, and rare manuscripts collected by the priest. The transfer of the collection in 2006 from the modest premises of the former municipal seat of Coldirodi to the large restored spaces of Villa Luca, also in Coldirodi, maintained the bond between library and art gallery and preserved the collection’s character.

13 Physics Cabinet Museum of the Cassini Classical High School

The oldest Higher Education Institute in the province and one of the few centenary high schools in Italy: founded in Nice in 1860, when the Kingdom of Sardinia extended to the Var, it was transferred to Sanremo that same year, so it would be Italian following the cession of this city to France. It is the only high school in the province of Imperia offering access to a wide range of curricula, also enriched by various ongoing experiments.

The scientific imprint of the high school is certified by the Physics Cabinet, where valuable finely-made instruments for carrying out experiments have been collected over time; proof of this is that historical records mention that the laboratory was also used by Alfred Nobel during his Sanremo stay. Currently, with the fruitful collaboration of the Physics Department of the University of Genoa and with support from the Liguria Region, the original collection has become a Museum open to the public, as well as a deepening opportunity for students and those passionate about science.

14 Where to Stay in Sanremo

Sanremo offers good hotel and non-hotel accommodation. Being a holiday resort for years, it is used to the “cult of the guest.” In Sanremo, it is possible to find hundreds and hundreds of accommodation offers.