Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
San Remo
POP 56,879
Fifty kilometres east of Europe's premier gambling capital lies San Remo, Italy's wannabe
Monte Carlo, a sun-dappled Mediterranean resort with a casino, a clutch of ostentatious
villas and lashings of Riviera-style grandeur. Known colloquially as the City of Flowers
for its colourful summer blooms, San Remo also stages an annual music festival (the sup-
posed inspiration for the Eurovision Song Contest) and the world's longest professional
one-day cycling race, the 298km
Milan-San Remo classic
.
During the mid-19th century the city became a magnet for regal European exiles, such
as Empress Elizabeth of Austria and Tsar Nicola of Russia, who favoured the town's
balmy winters. Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel maintained a villa here, and an onion-
domed Russian Orthodox church reminiscent of Moscow's St Basil's Cathedral still turns
heads down by the seafront.
Beyond the manicured lawns and belle époque hotels, San Remo hides a little-visited
old town, a labyrinth of twisting lanes that cascade down the Ligurian hillside. Curling
around the base is a 25km bike and walking path that tracks the coast as far as Imperia,
following the course of a former railway line and passing through the town's two
character-filled harbours.
