The square everyone calls the Piazzetta has an official name almost nobody uses: piazza Martiri dell'Olivetta, after the twenty partisans shot just above the village, at Olivetta, on the night of 2-3 December 1944. In Ligurian it is A Ciassetta. This is where the alleys of the old village open onto the harbour, and in July 2012 the association Locali Storici d'Italia entered it in its register: the first square ever listed, on a roll otherwise made of cafés and hotels.
What to see
The space is small, closed on three sides by tall narrow houses with arcades at street level and façades painted in the Genoese manner: cornices, false windows and mouldings that exist only as paint. The best run of them follows calata Guglielmo Marconi, towards the north-east. The fourth side is the sea, with the molo Umberto I and the moored fishing boats; behind the square, in the oldest core, stands the parish church of Divo Martino.
Above it, a few minutes up a stepped path through the olives, is Castello Brown: once the fortress of San Giorgio, recorded in 1425 when Tomaso Fregoso seized it, and excavations there turned up traces of a Roman watchtower of the 2nd-3rd century. In 1867 it was bought by Montague Yeats Brown, British consul in Genoa, who with Alfredo d'Andrade turned the parade ground into a hanging garden and had two maritime pines planted for his wedding. Since 1961 it has belonged to the municipality and holds exhibitions. Higher still is the church of San Giorgio; out on the point, the lighthouse of 1917.
Visiting
The road from Santa Margherita Ligure ends here and goes no further: from June to September it is better to leave the car behind and come by bus, or on the boats that link Santa Margherita, Rapallo and Camogli, or on foot along the coastal path, a little over an hour's walk. There is a car park, but it is tiny and expensive. The square itself takes a minute to cross; the time goes on what surrounds it, half an hour uphill to the lighthouse and as much again to the castle. Half a day is plenty, and a coffee at an outside table costs what a full lunch costs inland.
Our editors' tip
We come early, before the boats unload the first load of day-trippers: at eight in the morning the square holds only the fishmonger and the boys washing down the tables, and the light comes in low between the houses. Failing that, after seven in the evening, once the last sailing has left. And we suggest not sitting down at those tables: better to take the path towards the lighthouse, stop on the rocks and look at the Piazzetta from outside, which is the angle it has been painted and photographed from for a century.
