L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 10 L'Italo-Americano E v e r y s u m m e r arrives with its lists of the most b e a u t i f u l t h i s and the loveliest that, but most of them we have forgotten by the time we shake the sand out of our towels. This year, though, one may linger a little longer here in Italy, and for a happy reason: among the ten most b e a u t i f u l b e a c h e s i n Europe for 2026, chosen by the travel organization European Best Destina- tions, there was a single Ital- ian name, and it belonged to a place that even many Lig- urians tend to drive straight p a s t o n t h e w a y t o s o m e - w h e r e m o r e f a m o u s . Bogliasco, a little gathering of pastel houses around a small harbor just southeast of Genoa, came in fifth. Not bad at all, if you consider that the rest of the list was practically a celebration of Greece, with the very top spot going to a long golden beach down in the Portuguese Algarve. I t i s w o r t h p a u s i n g a moment on who hands out this kind of recognition, as the name European Best Des- tinations has become a famil- iar one in European travel. Based in Brussels and work- ing since 2009, every year they sift through hundreds of candidate towns and beaches across the continent, looking at tourism figures from Euro- stat, at how a place is trend- ing in online searches, at the care it takes of its own envi- r o n m e n t , a n d a t w h e t h e r ordinary travelers can actual- ly reach it and enjoy it with- out too much trouble. Out of all that examination comes a shortlist, and the shortlist is then put to the public, with travelers from more than 150 countries casting their votes to settle the final order. For this year's beaches, the edi- tors first narrowed things d o w n t o r o u g h l y t e n c o n - tenders per country, weigh- ing each one on its natural b e a u t y , t h e q u a l i t y o f i t s water, how welcoming it is to f a m i l i e s , a n d t h a t h a r d e r thing to measure – which is, very simply, its atmosphere – before sending the thirty finalists out to be voted on. To come fifth in a compa- ny like that, when you are a town of barely forty-five hun- dred souls, is really some- thing. And here is the part I find most interesting: Bogliasco n e v e r s e t o u t t o b e a beach destination at all. Its shore is not a wide ribbon of imported sand but a mod- est curve of pebbles right beneath the houses, the sort of place where local families have always wandered down in the evening to swim and t a l k w h i l e t h e l i g h t t u r n s amber over the water. The sea here is clean enough to h a v e e a r n e d r e c o g n i t i o n from the regional environ- m e n t a l a g e n c y , a n d c l e a r enough that you can watch your own feet on the stones below the surface. Above the little cove, climb the terraced slopes that Ligurians have patiently farmed for cen- turies, and behind it, the vil- lage rises up the hillside in that vertical, layered way the Riviera towns have, with a stone bridge arching over the stream that slips down into the port. That bridge, by the way, is far older than it looks: people in Bogliasco still call it the R o m a n b r i d g e , a n d although what you see today took shape in the thirteenth century and was reworked again in the seventeenth, it r e s t s o n f o u n d a t i o n s l a i d back when Roman legions u s e d t h i s c o a s t a l p a t h between the Fontanabuona v a l l e y a n d t h e s e a . T h e Romans, in fact, were late- comers here, because the areas around the village bear traces of human life reaching all the way to the Paleolithic. Such a tiny place, lived in for so astonishingly long. Thinking of it, you can feel all those centuries in the nar- row lanes and worn steps of the village center, and in the parish church of the Nativity of Mary, whose origins go back to the twelfth century, even if the handsome build- ing we admire now comes f r o m a r e b u i l d i n g i n t h e 1730s. But the passing of time w a s n ' t a l w a y s k i n d , o f c o u r s e . O n c e t h e v i l l a g e came under the Republic of G e n o a , a f t e r 1 1 8 2 , i t shared in Genoa's quarrels and its dangers, suffering raids from Saracen pirates and then, in 1432, the indig- nity of being destroyed out- right by a fleet of Venetian galleys during one of those long maritime wars between t h e t w o g r e a t s e a f a r i n g republics. Bogliasco rebuilt, as these coastal towns always did, and went on living from the sea, a community of fish- ermen, sailors, and ship cap- tains whose fortunes rose a n d f e l l w i t h t h e t i d e s o f G e n o e s e t r a d e . A f t e r t h e Napoleonic years, it passed, with the rest of Liguria, to the Kingdom of Sardinia, and then in 1861 it became part of a newly unified Italy. Q u i e t a s i t h a s a l w a y s been, the village has a way of drawing artists into its shel- ter. In 1905 and 1906, the Russian composer Alexan- der Scriabin settled here for a spell and worked on much of his Poème de l'Ex- t a s e , o n e o f t h e b o l d e s t orchestral scores of its age, written within earshot of these very waves. And that t h r e a d o f c r e a t i v e r e f u g e runs right up to our own day, which is where this story should speak with particular warmth to readers on the A m e r i c a n s i d e o f t h e Atlantic. Since 1996, Boglias- co has been home to the Lig- uria Study Center of the Bogliasco Foundation, an American non-profit that each year invites around fifty artists and scholars from across the world to spend a month in residence, giving them a room, their meals, and a studio in which to get o n w i t h s e r i o u s w o r k i n music, literature, architec- ture, history, and the visual arts. By now, more than a thousand fellows from over sixty countries have made that journey, so that this lit- t l e L i g u r i a n f i s h i n g t o w n b e c a m e o n e o f t h e s m a l l , treasured way stations of American and international cultural life. I n t e r e s t e d i n v i s i t i n g ? Getting there could hardly be simpler, since regional trains from Genoa's Brignole sta- tion reach Bogliasco in about a quarter of an hour, and the old coast road, the Via Aure- lia, runs right through it. What waits for you at the end of that short ride is not a s p e c t a c l e b u t s o m e t h i n g rarer and, to my mind, far more precious: a working Italian village that has kept its scale, its colors, and its sense of itself, and that now, somewhat to its own sur- prise, finds its little pebble beach counted among the m o s t b e a u t i f u l i n a l l o f Europe. How a tiny fishing town near Genoa made Europe's best beaches list CHIARA D'ALESSIO ALL AROUND ITALY TRAVEL TIPS DESTINATIONS ACTIVITIES With its pastel-colored houses overlooking the Mediterranean, Bogliasco has preserved the character of a traditional Ligurian seaside village while remaining just a short distance from the city of Genoa (Photo: Sean Pavone/Dreamstime)

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