In October 801 an elephant was landed at Porto Venere. It came with Isaac, the Jewish diplomat returning from Baghdad, where he had been Charlemagne's ambassador to caliph Harun al-Rashid: Abu l-Abbas was the caliph's gift to the emperor, and from here it went on towards France.
The name comes from the temple of Venus Ericina that stood where the church of San Pietro stands today. Genoa built the castle here in 1113 and the walls in 1161, and turned the place into a base for privateering against Pisa. Since 1997 the town, the islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto and the Cinque Terre are a World Heritage Site. The population is 3,702.
Torre Scola · villa romana del Varignano · Faro di San Venerio and 3 more
Pesto alla Genovese
24 places to stay · top rated: Piccolo Hotel Del Lido 9.5 · Hotel Florida Lerici 9.2
Next up: Feast of the Madonna Bianca, Tuesday 17 August
Nearest airport: Pisa Galilei, 61 km away
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📅 Every year, on 17 August
On 17 August Portovenere carries the icon of the Madonna Bianca in procession and lights the San Pietro headland with torches: it recalls the end of the plague of 1399.
Torre Scola A stone pentagon on a rock off Palmaria, armed with ten Genoese cannon since 1606. 
villa romana del Varignano Liguria's oldest Roman olive mill, with two presses and a two-aisled vaulted cistern. 
Faro di San Venerio On the island of Tino, lit since 1840: you can only land on 13 September. 
Fortezza del Varignano Born a Genoese lazaretto in 1724, now a navy frogmen base: it can only be looked at from outside. 
chiesa di San Pietro Two churches sewn together on the spur: a 5th-century basilica and the banded Gothic of the Genoese. 
santuario di Nostra Signora delle Grazie The inlaid choir of friar Paolo da Recco, above the Le Grazie cove, atop a stairway of olive trees. 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 Portovenere, but an easy day trip away.
