The name of Vado can be read in a letter Brutus wrote to Cicero in the first century BC. Strabo, Pliny the Elder and Pomponius Mela name it too: it was Vada Sabatia, grown up around a Roman military camp of the second century BC, one of the first of the colonisation of Liguria.
In 109 BC the via Aemilia Scauri linked it to Luni and to Rome, crossing the Apennines at the Cadibona pass. When in 641 Rothari's Lombards ravaged the area, Savona was subdued and Vado was not: perhaps for that reason the bishop of Savona moved his seat here, and kept it from the seventh to the ninth century. There are 8,232 residents.
chiesa di San Giovanni Battista · Villa Groppallo · chiesa di Sant'Ermete and 1 more
Pesto alla Genovese
25 places to stay · top rated: Cuore Di Riviera 9.7 · Casa di Emma 9.6
Next up: Saint John the Baptist in the Baroque parish church, Thursday 24 June
Nearest airport: Genova, 36 km away
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📅 Every year, on 24 June
On 24 June Vado Ligure celebrates Saint John the Baptist in the parish church dedicated to him, an 18th-century Baroque reconstruction with a dome, restored after the Second World War.
chiesa di San Giovanni Battista A Maragliano Baptism beside the font, and three centuries of altarpieces in one nave at Vado Ligure. 
Villa Groppallo The civic museum in Villa Groppallo holds the finds and coins of Roman Vada Sabatia. 
chiesa di Sant'Ermete Founded in the Middle Ages by Benedictines from the island of Bergeggi, with a rare two-nave plan. 
Monumento ai Caduti Vado Ligure's war memorial is by Arturo Martini: four bronzes, dated 1926. 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 Vado Ligure, but an easy day trip away.
