What to see · Sanremo

More places of interest

• Palazzo Borea d'Olmo

  Palazzo Borea d'Olmo is a historic Baroque palace in Sanremo, on via Matteotti, the town's main street, a few steps from the Ariston theatre. It is regarded as one of the most important Baroque buildings of western Liguria and still belongs to the Borea d'Olmo family, an old house of Venetian origin.

  What to see

  The palace grew out of several building campaigns starting from a late medieval core and took its present form between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As the gardens that surrounded it were gradually sold off, it came to face south directly onto via Matteotti. The fronts have a broad cornice of Renaissance taste, which matches the Baroque-Mannerist decoration. The main marble portal is topped by a statue of the Madonna by Montorsoli, a pupil of Michelangelo, who also made the marble Saint John the Baptist above the second portal, on via Cavour.

  The monumental entrance hall, in Genoese style, has marble columns and balustrades, a short flight of steps and vaulted ceilings. The halls are decorated with frescoes attributable to Maurizio Carrega, while the vaults bear late seventeenth-century frescoes by Giovanni Battista Merano. Inside there is also a small chapel with a marble altar and a statue of the Immaculate Conception, perhaps by Giacomo Antonio Ponsonelli. Lived in without interruption by the family, the palace has over time hosted princes, kings and illustrious figures, among them Queen Elisabeth of Spain, King Charles Emmanuel III, the painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Pope Pius VII and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

  Visiting

  The palace is a private residence. Until 2017 it housed the Civic Museum, which that year was moved to the seventeenth-century Palazzo Nota, owned by the Comune. The sources do not say whether or when the interiors can be visited: this must be checked.

  Our editors' tip

  In June 1753, during the Sanremo revolt against Genoa, the palace became the headquarters of the Genoese under General Agostino Pinelli, and many of those arrested were locked up in it. The family also has a chapel in the church of Santo Stefano, theirs since 1680 and dedicated to Saint Ignatius, with a vault frescoed by the same Merano and an altarpiece by Andrea Pozzo.

• Santuario della Madonna della Costa

  The sanctuary of the Madonna della Costa is a Marian shrine in Sanremo, on a hillock about one hundred metres above sea level, at the top of the hill on whose slopes lies the Pigna, the historic core of the town. The main feast is on 15 August, the feast of the Assumption.

  What to see

  Its foundation seems to date from between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in the locality of Castrum Sancti Romuli; according to some historians the shrine could date from 1361, when the Doria castle was ceded to the Republic of Genoa. The first document to mention it dates from 1474: the Fabiani family describes a chapel there already dedicated to the Madonna della Costa. The present building was put up in 1630 to replace the earlier church: it has a Latin-cross plan and a Baroque façade with the aedicule of the Assumption and the marble statues of Saints Syrus and Romulus, between two side turrets with small domes. The dome was built between 1770 and 1775; the façade was repainted and the dome and the two small domes were clad in copper between 1979 and 1981.

  Inside there are many wooden statues, some attributed to Anton Maria Maragliano, showing Saint Anne, Saint Joachim and Saint Joseph at the foot of the painting of the Madonna della Costa; by the same sculptor is the wooden crucifix placed in 1723 above the altar of the same name. The painting of the Madonna, which tradition held to be by Saint Luke, is attributed by some studies to Barnaba da Modena, a fourteenth-century painter, and by others to Nicolò da Voltri. In the presbytery stand the wooden figures of Saint Elizabeth, Saint Zechariah, Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist; the apse and the vault were decorated with stucco and frescoes in 1727 by Giacomo Antonio Boni. Among the paintings are the Visitation by Bartolomeo Guidobono, the Vision of Saint Hyacinth by Domenico Fiasella, donated in 1846 by the Genoese Carrega family, and the Beheading of the Baptist by Giulio Cesare Procaccini.

  Visiting

  The shrine overlooks the Pigna, between the San Francesco and San Romolo streams. The sources consulted give no opening hours: check them before walking up.

  Our editors' tip

  The people of Sanremo credit the Virgin with protecting them from the cholera of 1835: in memory of it, every fifteen years, on 15 August, a votive procession winds through the streets of the town. The shrine is also linked to the «festival of the chains», which by tradition began when the townspeople climbed up to it dragging chains to celebrate their liberation from the Doria.

• Villa Ormond

  Villa Ormond is a villa in Sanremo known above all for its large park, rich in exotic plants. It belonged to a Swiss family and since 1928 has been owned by the Comune.

  What to see

  Michel Louis Ormond (1828-1901) bought the old villa Rambaldi in 1875 at the wish of his French wife, Marie Marguerite Renet (1847-1925). The poet Pastonchi relates that the house, a white rectangle in the middle of a large olive grove, was demolished and rebuilt with porticoes and loggias, and that the olive trees were removed to make way for an English garden. When the earthquake of 1887 seriously damaged the structure, Ormond entrusted the rebuilding to the Swiss architect Emile Réverdin, who completed it in 1889. In 1928, after Marie Marguerite's death, the Comune bought the villa together with the park: it was Pietro Agosti, designer of many Sanremo buildings, who promoted the purchase, had a new pavilion added and turned the gardens into a public park.

  The park is split in two by the via Aurelia. To the north are the villa, the «Winter Garden» and a Japanese-style section recalling the twinning between Sanremo and the city of Atami. To the south are the fountain with stone putti designed by Agosti and the statues dedicated to two of Sanremo's many illustrious guests: the Mexican writer and politician Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, who died in Sanremo in 1893, and Nicholas I, ruler of Montenegro.

  Visiting

  Over time the villa has hosted award ceremonies and events, and from 1936 to 1977 international flower shows were held there. Today one wing houses the International Institute of Humanitarian Law. Opening hours of the park and access to the villa must be checked.

  Our editors' tip

  The International Institute of Humanitarian Law, founded in Sanremo in 1970, drew up between 1988 and 1994 the San Remo Manual on International Law applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea, which according to the sources is still the manual most used in naval academies around the world.

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