Italy's first casino was not in Sanremo but here. The gaming room of the villa La Sultana, built in 1883, stayed open from 1884 to 1905; then the company running it handed the licence over to the town of Sanremo, and that is how the famous casino came about.
The holiday trade had arrived a few years earlier with a property company from Paris, which in 1880 picked the village as a winter resort and laid out twelve new streets. The name, though, goes back to the fourteenth century: Fulk of Villaret, grand master of the knights of Saint John, was shipwrecked off this coast, swam ashore and had a chapel built, along with a hospice for pilgrims to the Holy Land. The population is 3,386.
Villa La Sultana · Torrione Saraceno
Pesto alla Genovese
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Next up: Saint John the Baptist and the crusaders saved from the storm, Thursday 24 June
Nearest airport: Genova, 112 km away
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📅 Every year, on 24 June
Ospedaletti celebrates Saint John the Baptist on 24 June; the town's name comes from the hospice for pilgrims bound for the Holy Land built by crusaders who, having survived a storm, raised a chapel in his honour.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Ospedaletti, but an easy day trip away.
