You can only travel from Santa Margherita along this often precipitous road. By car if you don’t want to see anything or on foot if you do. It is a leisurely one hour walk where you must  keep one eye on the spectacular coastline and the other on fast moving sports cars in a hurry to somewhere very glamourous no doubt.

On the way you can see some pretty impressive houses too and wonder who could possibly afford to live in these majestically luxurious domestic castles. The one above, for instance, is owned by the odious former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

You can also get there by boat – either in one of the regular ferries or, if you are rich enough to live here at all, in your own rather elegant yacht.

More beautiful, I thought, than the grandiose mansions, was the landscape that they look out on – always made more delightful by the bejeweled contrast between the turquoise blue and the emerald green of the foliage.

There is a wonderful contrast of colours too where the simple mix of nasturtiums and what I guess is a variety of blue Morning Glory tumble over the rocks in a vividly hued tangle apparently untrained by any gardener’s hands. Above them stand olive and lemon trees and beyond that one of those lush Mediterranean gardens where, it seems, anything will grow.

I kept seeing this vivid yellow and orange climbing plant on my travels and would love to think I could grow it in England but I have no idea what it is called.

Maybe someone will identify it for me one day. Here on the walk to Portofino, it grows in abundance.

Before you get to Portofino, you reach the tiny village of Parraggi with its splendid beach reached after a rather steep descent from the road. Some say that this is the best swimming beach in these parts and I was sorely tempted to break my journey here exchanging the dusty road for the pleasantly warm seawater but I persevered and finally got to Portofino itself. Not before I found myself having to make way for a bus that couldn’t pass until I crossed the road to stand amongst the bad-tempered soft-top car drivers held up in one of the most expensive traffic jams you will ever see.

Then there it was, this fabled place, since the 1950’s, one of the World’s most glamourous locations.

It is, of course, very beautiful, a small fishing village with little fishermen’s houses decorated in the vivid Ligurian style, a mix of paints from a natural artist’s palette. Beautiful, charming but, if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t guess when you first walk down the little main street that this is millionaire row.

I know those faces – isn’t that the guy from Lost? and the one in front, he was in Grey’s Academy I think and the other bloke’s a footballer.  They were making a glossy film ad here not long ago but the look is from Portofino’s golden days.

This is where Elizabeth Taylor brought all four of her husbands – at different times naturally. Here she is with Eddie Fisher…

Another Portofino fan was Orson Welles who brought his little dog along for a good time. Then there was Ava Gardner, Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo, Marlon Brando and, below, the young Sophia Loren.

Nowadays, how times change,  you can see the singer Rihanna sucking on an icecream…

… or Madonna strutting her very different style when she came here to celebrate her 51st birthday.

For the occasion she hired an entire floor at Portofino’s most exclusive hotel, the Hotel Splendido up there on the hill above the village.

It has always been exclusive, glamourous and expensive and almost anyone who has been anyone glitsy, has stayed here

The beds are comfy and you get nice sea views apparently so let’s not knock it. Certainly the new generation of Hollywood celebrities have learnt to enjoy themselves here. Jennifer Lopes even brought her husband along for a little romance by the sea.

I’m told though that to be really cool you don’t stay at the Splendido, you only come to Portofino if you’re invited to stay with Messrs. Dolce and Gabbana who have the classiest villa in the village – I always thought Eva Mendes was cool.

When you know about all of this showbiz stuff the shops in Portofino come as less of a surprize. For a fishing village, it sure has some fancy clothes shops.

Not everyone though is quite as glamourous but then all great stars need an audience – even if it has just come in on the latest ferry. It is not difficult to see why they visit, if it isn’t to see the odd, or very odd, celebrity, surely it must be for those lovely little port side houses with their trompe d’oeil exteriors….

..and then, of course,  there’s the intoxicating mix of the sea and the tree-lined hillside. It is truly a wonderful place in spite of its A list celebrities.

It is difficult to stand in the little harbour and look up without wanting to go up the hill to the building at its summit, the exotically named Castello Brown once owned by an Englishman, Mr Montague Yeats Brown, the retired English consul from Genoa who turned the 16th Century fortification into his very own 19th Century des res now umbrella’d by two pine trees one planted on his wedding day, the other dedicated to his wife. Moreover,  he succeeded in taking possession of the place where the English navy failed. The British navy attacked Portofino in the days of Napoleon Bonaparte because of  its prominent position on this Mediterranean peninsula.

It’s worth climbing that hill just to look back down to appreciate the loveliness of those Ligurian houses forming their own manmade cliff face.

Now the only conquering here is mind-over-matter as you make your way up the steep hill above the village for a view worth a bit of sweat and bother.

Up here you can see to the other side of the Portofino Peninsular to where the Mediterranean Sea looks positively oceanic. Also making the long haul up to the top means you can find some welcome cool inside the medieval pastiche that is Consul Brown’s contribution to Anglo-Italian relations.

He kept the rooms at a very manageable size and resisted the temptation, alla Berlusconi, of making everything too grand.

All you need are the windows when you have one of the best views in Europe…

..and a terraced Italian garden to die for.

The Brown family lived here until 1949 and then some other lucky sods bought it until it was sold to Portofino council and became available for us ordinary folks to visit and for millionaires to stage their second or third marriages here.

If it were up for grabs then I wouldn’t turn it down but then Castello Wolfie might not have the same cachet. Hats off to Mr Montague Yeats Brown who defied convention and was unembarrassed to turn a 16th Century Italian fortress into a pleasant English villa.

If you remained unimpressed by the beauty of Portofino when you were down there in the village, you would have to change your mind when you saw it from Mr Brown’s terrace.

No wonder everyone wants to come here and, you know, it might just be possible that all those rich Hollywood stars actually had rather good taste. Now there’s a thought.

Well everyone can dream – that’s why Martini ads. pick up on our attraction to the Italian Riviera:

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I have just returned from my Italian holidays staying in the small Italian Riviera town of Santa Margherita Ligure that sits happily on the Mediterranean sea shore along the coast from Genoa, Italy’s largest harbour and just next door to Portofino, a small village that has turned itself into a millionaires’ haven. Santa Margherita Ligure has been an elegant seaside resort since the 19th Century but got truly “discovered” by the international “jet set” during the 1950’s when a relatively forgotten part of Europe became “the” place to be seen whether you were a hollywood star or a literary giant like Ernest Hemingway or, ssh, Ezra Pound. It was one of the principal locations for the Gina Lollobrigida and Rock Hudson movie Come September (1961) so if you ever get a chance to watch it you will get a feel for what it was like in those days.

I had come, if I’m being honest, for the sea and the sun and, of course, the food but I didn’t spend all my time on the beach drinking tea and generally idling around.

Well, as I said, I didn’t spend all my time idling around on the beach, there were plenty of other places to while away the time in a languorously unhurried way. S.M.L. is a very pretty town quietly getting on with life in spite of all us wide-eyed visitors. The climate has made Liguria one of Italy’s lushest regions where exotic flowers and palm trees mix with intoxicatingly perfumed jasmine hedgerows and where the trees are laden not just with olives but with oranges and lemons too.

Ligurians have a special way with the exteriors of their houses decorating them elegantly in a traditional “trompe d’oeil” style where detailed painting compensates, maybe economically, with the absence of elaborately carved stone-work.

Some of the buildings are masterpieces of artificial perspective.

Their houses are works of art and beguile the eye with their tricks so that sometimes you don’t quite know if those windows are real or not.

The result is a wonderful mix of colours beautifully contrasted with the blue skies and vibrant greens of the foliage.

It is a real pleasure just to stroll maybe that’s why the Ligurians make such a point of keeping their streets so attractive. After-all slowly walking and talking on a pleasant evening seems to be what Italians like best.

I always savoured the ten minute walk every morning from my accomodation down through the town to the seashore. Well it would have taken ten minutes if there wasn’t always something to distract you on route.

I liked some of the old and less glamourous buildings too like these gnarled workshops with their solid but weathered oak doors.

Even the modern apartment blocks joined in the game of colours. People, well these Italians anyway, don’t seem to mind living close to each other. You really can chat to your neighbour across the road without leaving home.

My apartment was in an area known as San Siro which had once been the agricultural village nestling in the foothills next to the fishing port of Santa Margherita but now the two are co-joined with an invisible thread.  I enjoyed the down-to-earth atmosphere in this part of town often taking the first coffee of the day in its little piazza by the church of San Siro

This is where the local people congregated whether it was for the market, for a coffee or a beer or to let the children romp with that peculiar joyfullness that is not always apparent in Northern European streets. Sometimes though it is just quiet and you can sit  with your coffee and watch the shadows lengthen over the church.

Inside the church of San Siro is another world and an unexpected one too – Italian Baroque doesn’t go in for understatements and this small farming village had its own 17th Century temple to spiritual chutzpah.

The walls are decorated with a number of paintings from the Italian Baroque often with an emphasis on the gory side of saintly martyrdom. Coming in here when it was so hot outside, I identified more with those languishing plaster angels over the arches. San Siro, or Saint Syrus of Pavia, was reputed to have been the small boy who supplied Jesus with the five loaves of bread that he used to feed the five thousand in his most hospitable of miracles. San Siro obviously had a sensible Italian respect for good food.

Coming out again into the sunshine, I see those “trompe d’oeil” house fronts anew – they are merely another form of that Italian delight in decorative design.

When I reach the little town’s main square, my eye always goes to the statue of Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), a Ligurian from Genoa and one of united Italy’s founding fathers who campaigned and fought for the unification of Italy living long enough to see his dreams fulfilled and to die a national hero. The affection with which he is still remembered is somehow illustrated by those golden oranges clustering in the tree next to his memorial.

Mazzini also believed that the natural consequence of a united Italy was a united Europe so I wondered what he would make of us Europeans today with all our self-imposed economic divisions.

A short walk later and I’m in Santa Margherita’s other great gathering point, the square outside the town’s main church, the Basilica of Santa Margaretha herself or Santa Margaretha d’Antiocha (Saint Margaret of Antioch) to give her her full name who may be as fictional as the dragon that is supposed to have swallowed her but who is venerated as the patron saint of childbirth after the “miraculous” way she was regurgitated  from the dragon’s stomach.

Everyone seems to pass through this square no matter where they are going or what they are doing even if they are not interested in the regurgitation of their patron saint. The square is the site of manhy of the town’s communal events, it holds regular markets, outdoor concerts and conferences and it is a place where it just feels right to linger with friends letting the church’s grand bells mark the passage of time.

Some folk seemed immmune to the strength of the sun…

..but luckily for me there is the splendid Cafe del Borgo on the edge of the square where it is possible to sit at midday in delicious shade for the next espresso coffee of the day. Here you can people-watch, (or is it people-bitch?) and admire the view and even, if you are lucky, listen to an alfresco concert. One night I sat there until late when a youthful and dynamic brass band played operatic music by Verdi, Rossini and Puccini reminding us just where Italian opera gets its inspiration.

I too could keep my eye on the time and on the basilica sitting under the cafe’s canopy

The Basilica di Santa Margherita is, like the church of San Siro, a 17th century building in the fashionable Baroque style.

Completed in 1658, it is even less shy than San Siro…

… and inside it is even more magnificent. You will love it if you think Liberace and Lady Gaga needed lessons in exuberance but if you are just a simple Englishman on a seaside holiday, it can, at first, take your breath away.

Nothing is left unadorned and the finished work is illuminated by rows of extravagant crystal chandeliers telling us, I guess, about the glory of God.

There are many gloomily realistic 17th Century Baroque paintings in the side chapels illustrating just how rough a time some of those saints had and sparing us few of the details of their bloody martyrdoms.

I am unfamiliar with the Italian painters who followed the great Renaissance flourishing and I am still not sure how much I like many of them but this one, Saint Catherine’s Mystical Marriage by Genoan artist Valerio Castello (1624-1659) captured my imagination with its gentle depiction of the saint and the Virgin’s love for the Christchild along with the wickedly barbed knives on Saint Catherine’s infamous wheel of torture decorously displayed under her skirts.

After all that extravagance and emotion, it feels good to walk down some of the little alleyways, carrugi, that are less “in yer face” but just as contemplative in their own way.

Italy does alleyways exceptionally well. They are places for adventures with a hint of danger and mystery when we don’t quite know where we are heading.

I love that feeling so quite often I just keep walking…

…often not knowing where I’m going….

..but drawn onwards by hints of the unknown…..

until I arrive somewhere new in a burst of sunlight.

Then it’s time for an Italian beer served colder than cold when you are ready to return to the world of people.

On such an evening, I did the journey in reverse starting in the little port with its mix of fishing boats and luxury cruisers just as the sun began to fade.

I was heading up the hillside for a classical music concert in one of the town’s monumental 17th century mansions but yet again, the landscape and its buildings were inspirational enough on their own in the fading golden light.

As you climb higher there are panoramic views alternating with secretive glimpses at the ends of alleys…

…the sea is always apparent even if it is only in its reflective light…

….walking to the hill-top above the town where another Baroque building, the Villa Durazzo (1676) with its ornamental gardens and classical statuary commands the view.

It is a fine place to visit during the day when you can wander through its parkland gardens and take coffee on its terrace but in the evening light I enjoyed it even more as somehow,  I always feel a building’s history more intensely in twilight.

The Villa Durazzo now belongs to the town after centuries in aristocratic hands and it is in the process of becoming a mix between museum, function room, concert hall and, increasingly, the place for a glamourous wedding ceremony.

One of the century’s most expensive weddings was held here in 2008 when the English footballer, Wayne Rooney married Coleen McLoughlin although most of the millions of pounds spent on the event was mostly to cover the cost of several days of partying on a luxury yacht also hired for the occasion. The singer Rod Stewart also married one of his many wives here at the Villa Durazzo.

I wasn’t here for a wedding though but a music recital by the two classical guitarists Mauro Bonelli and Andrea Leveratto who played excitingly virtuosic arrangements of music by J.S.Bach, Rameau and Piazzola with just a few blips when one of the guitars developed a  tuning problem.

Then it was  time for the descent down the hill with palm trees silhouetted against the evening blues of the Mediterranean.

Santa Margherita Ligure is a quietly seductive town once tasted never forgotten. Here is a parting momento, not those two guitarists I heard in the Villa Durazzo but the same music, the Gavotte and Six Variations by the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) but this time played by the excellent Zagreb Quitar Quartet reminding us just how well guitars can imitate the harpsichord for which Rameau wrote this music. Look out for some more of my Italian Riviera experiences tomorrow.

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Christopher Columbus, Liguria’s most famous son, points West to the land that he stumbled upon and that we know as the United States Of America. He is standing on a plinth on the seafront at Santa Margaretha Ligure down the coast from Italy’s biggest port and Christopher’s birthplace, Genoa. This is a seafaring region and Genoa has had in moment of glory as one of the great maritime powers.the sea for Columbus was an epic force to be challenged and conquered. For me though the sea means going for a swim, a leisurely one at that, and then, maybe lying in the sun for a bit to recover.

There’s an old cannon on the seafront too but, hey, I was in no mood for fighting, I was on holiday in Italy’s Liguria region over the last two weeks and I was determined to put thoughts of Europe’s current problems as far to the back of my mind as was possible and to enjoy its many positive and richly varied qualities. For the moment, I put away my ammunition and relaxed here enjoying my first visit to the Italian Riviera.

 Santa Margaretha Ligure is a seaside town sitting in tranquil mode between the Mediterannean Sea and the foothills of the Alps and the Apennines. It is a special place – enjoyed since at least the 19th Century by Northern Europeans in need of some time in a decent climate surrounded by beauty. I feel a common bond with those ancestors.

The grand hotels that line the promenade talk of those days but they can also swank about their relationship with some of the most glamourous international celebrities of the early and later 20th Century. Walking down to the beach, I was treading in as many famous footprints as decorate Hollywood Boulevard. I really did have a drink in the bar where Richard Burton entertained Elizabeth Taylor.

Beach holidays are a relatively new thing for me, an Englishman with vampiric pigmentation but I am learning to cope with all that sun and I’m pleased to discover another use for umbrellas other than sheltering from the rain. So, quite often in those two weeks, I headed down to a private beach, the charmingly run Baigni Vicini, in what would have been the shadow of the plushly Edwardian Hotel di Lido but there weren’t many shadows where I was – just sunshine.

Amongst its many delights and specially redolent of pleasure to us Northern Europeans, is the Mediterranean itself. It didn’t lose any of its charm for me even if there are a few more jelly fish out there these days since we started to over-fish their predators. Luckily for me, the usual occupant of that Bagnino chair, the ever vigilant salvataggio, life-guard, shouted scaring the life out of me, telling me to come out of the water twice within minutes, the only time I heard him shout all the time I was there. He repeatedly shouted to me, the only one in the sea: “No, signor!” He then fished out a football sized jelly fish. The rest of the beach’s occupants thought I had a special attraction for jelly fish. I felt a fool but I now have real admiration for that Signor Salvataggio. I then went back to my occasional and very pleasant swim between those two jetties and I never got stung or heard of anyone else getting hurt either.

Soon everything was tranquil again and I slunk away for a little lie down.

Mostly the sea was just something to watch from the shelter of my umbrella-covered sun-bed where I lay, shamefully, for hours doing not very much. I’m amazed it took me so long to discover the pleasure of extreme languor.

The temperature was often up around 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and the sky was as blue as the sea was green. There was always some relief though brought on a tray from the beach-bar.

I was not the only one enjoying the idle pleasures of the perfect weather but I gradually retreated into my own world fed by my reading of some of the books on my Kindle reading machine until the strain sent me back into one of those wonderful mid-afternoon sun-induced snoozes.

I also skimmed my Kindle for the daily editions of The Times (of London) and The New York Times (of New York) just to stay in touch but, shamefully again, it all seemed so very far away and, for the moment at least, irrelevant.

Sometimes, I put down the reading material and just gazed into space and at other times I dug out my iPod and listened to my current musical discovery, the wonderfully lush and highly romantic music Leo Delibes (1836-1891) wrote for his ballet Sylvia (1876). He didn’t have the sea in mind when he wrote this piece about the Moon Goddess’ Diana’s love-challenged nymph, Sylvia but for me this music will now always speak to me of the Italian Riviera.

Have a listen and hopefully, you too can share some of the pleasure that it brought to me there lying in the sun looking out to sea thinking, sometimes about Sylvia and her shepherd lover but at other times thinking of not very much at all.

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Awaiting my flight to Italy from London Gatwick.

Genoa airport.

On the beach at Santa Margaretha Ligure.

Walking to Paraggi.

Mediterranean blues and greens.

Liguria is gentle with flowers.

Cobbled streets of Portofino.

Portofino lunchtime.

Designer shops in Portofino.

Portofino.

Posh boats and humble ones in Portofino harbour.

More designer-wear in Portofino.

Inside Castello Brown, Portofino.

Castello Brown.

Castello Brown.

Castello Brown with small lizard.

Castello Brown.

Coffee-time, Santa Margaretha Ligure.

Rappallo.

Lunch-time in Rappallo

More coffee, Rappallo.

Back on the beach, Santa Margaretha Ligure.

On the train to Genoa.

Royal Palace, Genoa.

Royal Palace, Genoa.

Sculpture in Royal Palace, Genoa.

Hall of Mirrors, Royal Palace, Genoa.

Tea-time, Genoa.

Santa Margaretha Ligure market.

Back on the beach, Santa Margaretha Ligure.

Front row seat for a concert in Villa Durazzo, Santa Margaretha Ligure.

Gone swimming, Santa Margaretha Ligure.

Cliff-top walking, Cinque Terre.

Waiting for the ferry, Cinque Terre.

On the ferry in the Mediterranean.

Drinks menu in the American Bar at the Hotel di Lido, Sant Margaretha Ligure.

Campari and soda in the American Bar.

Time to head for the airport.

Home again in the UK.

I did wear that hat in Italy – honestly.

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