In 1242 the troops of Emperor Frederick II arrived at Levanto and found the old Malaspina keep waiting for them; it held off every assault and saved the people sheltering inside. The lesson landed: a harbour serving the galleys of the Republic of Genoa, to which the town had voluntarily submitted in 1229, could not stay undefended. In 1265 work began on the ring of walls, anchored to the castle that overlooks the town from the east.
What to see
The castle has an elongated plan, parallel to the shore and curving slightly north-east, and it is exactly there that a round tower served as the hinge for the walls. From that point the circuit ran roughly 500 metres in all. It dropped down the slope to the north-west, turned north on a gentle arc, passed behind the apse of the parish church of Sant'Andrea and behind piazza Massola, and reached what was then the mouth of the Cantarana stream. On those banks the towers of the gate known as del Fossato, or dell'Acqua, are still standing.
Past the gate the wall climbs the Costa hill, behind the church of Santa Maria della Costa and the oratory of San Giacomo, and reaches its highest point at the round clock tower, which survives. From there it came back down to the start of via Guani, where the gate of San Cristoforo opened, and closed in piazza del Popolo at the sea gate, the porta della Marina. A bequest of 1550 paid for modernising the circuit and fortifying the stagno largo, north of today's via Garibaldi.
Visiting
There is no ticketed route: the walls are urban fabric, absorbed into houses, kitchen gardens and stairways, and you follow them on foot from the old town. Start in piazza del Popolo, which in the Middle Ages was harbour water rather than paving, and climb towards the clock tower: the height gain is modest, but there are plenty of steps and in summer it is better done early. Several stretches were demolished in the twentieth century, so the circuit reads as segments rather than an unbroken ring.
Our editors' tip
Look up the town plans drawn by Matteo Vinzoni, the eighteenth-century cartographer from Levanto, who recorded the settlement while the walls were still intact: with those in mind you understand where the shoreline advanced by tens of metres and why the harbour silted up. Then ask locally about the two tunnels said to have left the castle, one towards the Pietra beach and the other under the houses as far as the church of the Annunziata: no document records them, but the story still circulates.