They call it the Roman bridge, but Roman it is not: it was built in the Middle Ages, on top of an older structure that left it its name. Ten arches, three of them humpbacked, cross the Merula torrent; the bridge followed the line of the old Roman road and connected the hamlet of Colla Micheri directly with the castle of Andora. It explains Andora better than any view does, because it shows how people moved about here before the coast became the important part of town.
What to see
The thing to look at is the profile. The three humpbacked spans break the line with a rise and a fall, while the other arches stretch it out over the riverbed. A bridge this long over a torrent this short tells you how far the Merula could swell: in Andora's story the silting up of the watercourse, together with outbreaks of malaria and plague, was one of the reasons the old village emptied out after the fifteenth century, in favour of nearby Laigueglia.
On the right bank, close to the bridge, stands the parish church of San Giovanni Battista, fifteenth century, with its rectory. At the other end of the route, high up, are the remains of the castle of the marquesses of Clavesana and the gate tower raised between 1220 and 1240, still intact; a little below the castle is the medieval fountain built to refresh pilgrims on the via Julia Augusta. The bridge is the link that holds all of this together.
Visiting
Andora sits on the via Aurelia, has an exit on the A10 motorway and a station on the Genoa-Ventimiglia line: you reach the bridge on foot from the floor of the Merula valley, with no opening hours and no ticket. From here the climb starts towards the hamlet of Castello, where you find the church of Santi Giacomo e Filippo, built in Capo Mele stone, and a view that runs as far as the Ligurian Alps. Wear closed shoes: the ground is uneven and in summer the riverbed is dry and stony.
Our editors' tip
Our advice is not to stop at the bridge but to use it the way it was used: cross it and carry on towards Colla Micheri, 162 metres up, along the line of the via Julia Augusta, which stayed in service until the first decades of the nineteenth century. It is a village of farmhouses among olive trees, where the Norwegian ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl lived for years and died in 2002. An hour on foot and the bridge explains itself.