In one of the air-raid shelters a line of German is still legible: “Spiele nicht mit ein Gewehr, denn es könnt geladen sein” — don't play with a rifle, it might be loaded. It is the voice of the last occupants of a strongpoint that never fired a shot: the 202nd coastal battery of the Royal Italian Army, put up at the end of the 1930s on the western slope of the Portofino peninsula as an anti-ship system covering the eastern side of the Gulf of Genoa. Together with the batteries at Arenzano, Monte Moro and Pegli it formed the belt meant to defend the city during the Second World War.
What to see
The original installation had three 152/45 guns in barbette mountings on three concrete platforms. For fire control and observation the crews used two reinforced-concrete bunkers linked by a tunnel cut into the rock; two further tunnels, up to 25 metres long, ran from the service quarters to the ammunition stores and the personnel shelters. The barracks held an infirmary, a command room, a dormitory, a storeroom, kitchens and latrines, and the whole strongpoint was closed off by wire entanglements and minefields.
The Allied naval raids of 14 June 1940 and 9 February 1941 exposed the weakness of the Genoese defences: the ships stayed well beyond the reach of the 152/45 guns and the battery never had its baptism of fire. After 8 September 1943 the position passed to Wehrmacht and Italian Social Republic units, and the Todt Organisation reworked it along German bunker lines: two of the emplacements gave way to a pair of “turtle-shell” casemates with 88 mm anti-aircraft guns, while the command post moved to San Rocco di Camogli, inside villa Giulia. The rangefinder bunkers survive as well: one at località il Bricco, on the southern slope of Monte di Portofino, whose field of view ran from Capo Mele to the Gulf of La Spezia, and a second at località Erbaio, beside a radio bunker probably intended for a German-built radar.
Visiting
The last stretch is on foot only. From the via Aurelia you climb towards the Passo della Ruta and, at the top, turn off for the village of San Rocco; from there a short panoramic path leads to località Fornelli and then to the emplacements. There is no ticket office and no lighting, the rooms are as the soldiers left them and the scrub has taken back a good part of the site: closed shoes, a torch and care over where you walk, because the gun platforms look straight down onto empty air.
Our editors' tip
In front of the command room door, look for the metal blade still fixed in its original place: it was there to scrape mud off boots, and it says more about the garrison's daily round than any bunker. Above one door jamb a sign reading “Chiappa” survives, with a small shield resembling a coat of arms. Come up in the late afternoon: the low light on the concrete and on the open sea makes it obvious why the guns were sited precisely here.