San Remo

Shop

Get even more with a Lonely Planet guide.

Sicily

$24.99

Shop Book

Scooter left on top of "La Pigna" - old town of Sanremo, Italy. View of Sanremo's old and new buildings and Mediterranean sea in the evening.

Getty Images

Overview

Fifty kilometres east of Europe's premier gambling capital lies San Remo, Italy's own Monte Carlo, a sun-dappled Mediterranean resort with a casino, a clutch of ostentatious villas and lashings of Riviera-style grandeur. Beaches aside, San Remo (spelled Sanremo in Italian) hides the atmospheric lanes of a medieval district called La Pigna.

01 / Attractions

Must-see attractions

Bussana Vecchia
San Remo
Seven kilometres northeast of San Remo lies an intriguing artists' colony. On Ash Wednesday 1887, an earthquake destroyed the village of Bussana Vecchia…
Chiesa Russa Ortodossa
San Remo
Built for the Russian community that followed Tsarina Maria Aleksandrovna (wife of Tsar Alexander II) to San Remo in 1906, the Russian Orthodox church of…
Il Casinò Municipale
San Remo
San Remo's belle époque casino, one of only four in Italy, was dealing cards when Vegas was still a waterhole in the desert. The building dates from 1905…
La Pigna
San Remo
San Remo's little-visited old town is a labyrinth of quiet, twisting lanes set on a hilltop just above the bustling centre. Get there by taking Via Santo…
Museo Civico
San Remo
Housed in a 15th-century palazzo, several rooms in this museum, some with fine frescoed ceilings, display local prehistoric and Roman archaeological finds…
Villa Nobel
San Remo
The Moorish Villa Nobel houses a museum dedicated to Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who established the Nobel Prize while living here. At the time of…