The Clavesana tower at the top of the hill is truncated, and the flat cut is what remains of the demolition ordered by the Genoese after 1228, the year Taggia passed into the Republic's domains. The castle sits on a hill west of the built-up area, hemmed in by the rio Santa Lucia to the south and the rio Barbarasa to the north, a lookout position that in all likelihood was already in use in Roman times or earlier. Excavations turned up mostly pottery fragments, from the pre-Roman period to the Middle Ages, now held in the store of the archaeological museum in Sanremo. The fortress you walk through, though, goes back to around the 11th century, when the lords of Clavesana, feudal holders of the town, built their castle here.
What to see
Most of what still stands comes from the enlargements that the Republic of Genoa and the local community carried out in the 16th and 17th centuries on the first, by then ruined, stronghold. In its complete form the castle had eight gates and eight bastions, ringed by walls that in the sixteenth century grew to enclose the convent of San Domenico. Two of those bastions can still be read, the Orso and the Ciazzo, along with the stump of the Clavesana tower at the summit.
To grasp how much has gone, look for two images: the painting kept in the town hall and the map by the cartographer Matteo Vinzoni, which show the fortress entire, as it survived into the 18th century. Then the story turns prosaic: in the nineteen-sixties the tanks of the municipal aqueduct were installed inside the walls, and the site slid into neglect. Recent conservation work reversed that, and in 2016 a theatre was set up among the ruins for shows and cultural events.
Visiting
You climb on foot from the old centre of Taggia, in the province of Imperia: the hill is the one immediately west of the houses, and the ascent is short but unrelenting. The site is open-air and ruined, so footwear matters more than opening hours; the stones are uneven and slippery in the rain. Go all the way to the top, next to the tower: from there you read the layout of the town in one glance, spreading east and south from the Middle Ages onwards, away from the castle and towards the valley floor.
Our editors' tip
If the programme allows, time your climb to coincide with an evening at the theatre laid out among the ruins: sitting beside the bastions while the sun drops over the rio Barbarasa gives you a castle no daytime visit can deliver. Failing that, come early in the morning: light from the east strikes the Clavesana tower full on and makes the point where it was cut off unmistakable.