The Italian Riviera in a day: Bussana Vecchia, San Remo, Dolceacqua

Most people on the Côte d'Azur spend their entire stay without crossing into Italy. It's fifteen minutes by road from Menton to Ventimiglia. Yet it's one of the most underused day trips on the Riviera — and one of the best.

I pick up from anywhere along the coast: Nice, Antibes, Cannes, Villefranche, Beaulieu. Departure around 9am. We're across the border before 10. The rest of the day takes care of itself.

First stop: Bussana Vecchia

On the hillside above San Remo, visible from the motorway if you know where to look, sits what appears to be a ruined medieval village. It is — and it isn't.

In February 1887, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck the Ligurian coast. The village of Bussana was destroyed in seconds. Most of the population was in the church when the roof came down. Survivors eventually relocated a few kilometres down the valley, building what's now called Bussana Nuova. The old village was abandoned, stripped for stone, and left to the elements for the better part of a century.

Then, in the late 1950s, a Turinese ceramicist named Mario Giani — known by his artist name Clizia — discovered the ruins and moved in. He was followed by others. Artists from across Europe, drawn by the atmosphere and the rent (zero), set up studios in the crumbling houses. The Italian government declared the village dangerous and tore out all the staircases. The artists stayed anyway.

Today Bussana Vecchia is a functioning village of around fifty permanent residents — all artists, craftspeople, or both. The streets are unpaved and uneven. The earthquake damage is still visible in the collapsed church of Sant'Egidio, open to the sky, vines growing through the roof. But the studios are alive. Ceramics, metalwork, painting, sculpture. You can walk in, watch them work, buy something directly from the person who made it.

Most visitors stay an hour. That's usually enough to walk the main lanes and look into a few studios. The views over the coast and the greenhouse plains below — the flower-growing Riviera dei Fiori — are worth the climb alone.

San Remo: Eataly for lunch

Down from Bussana, we head into San Remo proper. The city is known for its casino, its flower market, its annual music festival. It's a proper Italian city — not a village, not a resort — with a real centre and real life going on.

For lunch, I bring clients to Eataly San Remo. If you've been to Eataly elsewhere — Turin, Milan, Rome — you know the format: a large market hall combining high-quality Italian produce with restaurants and counters under one roof. The San Remo location works particularly well for a day trip. Everything is made with Ligurian ingredients: focaccia, fresh pasta, Taggiasca olives, local wine. You eat well without making a reservation, without a dress code, without ceremony. It suits the pace of the day.

After lunch, if time allows: a walk through the old town — La Pigna — a tangle of medieval lanes on the hill above the port. Or down to the flower market on Corso Garibaldi if you want to understand where half the cut flowers in Europe actually come from.

Dolceacqua: the bridge Monet painted

From San Remo we take the valley road inland, following the Nervia river up into the hills. The landscape shifts — away from the coast, into a narrower, greener world. Fifteen minutes from San Remo, Dolceacqua appears.

It's a medieval village split by the river, connected by a 15th-century humpback bridge. The Ponte Vecchio is 33 metres long, a single arch, and it looks like it defies physics slightly. Claude Monet came here in 1884 and painted it multiple times, calling it a "jewel of lightness." The paintings are in private collections now. The bridge is unchanged.

Cross the bridge and you're in the Terra — the older, higher part of the village, a maze of covered lanes called carrugi that wind up toward the Doria castle. The Doria family controlled this valley for centuries; what's left of their fortress still dominates the skyline. It's partially ruined, partially restored, and gives you a sense of the scale these families operated at.

In the Terra: small wine bars, a few artisan shops, the kind of quiet that's hard to find on the coast in summer. The local wine is Rossese di Dolceacqua — a DOC red made from a grape that grows almost nowhere else. Light, cherry-toned, worth trying on the spot rather than transporting.

Friday option: Ventimiglia market

On Fridays, there's a different version of this day. The Ventimiglia market runs along the seafront from early morning — considered the largest open-air market in Italy. Hundreds of stalls: leather goods, clothing, local produce, Ligurian specialities, flowers.

It's a genuine market, not a tourist trap. The locals from the Côte d'Azur come every week. Arrive before 10am if you want it at its best — by midday it's dense. What's worth buying: Ligurian olive oil, focaccia, fresh pasta, Taggiasca olives. The leather and clothing are negotiable; the food isn't, and doesn't need to be.

On a Friday I typically combine Ventimiglia in the morning with Dolceacqua in the afternoon, skipping or shortening San Remo depending on the pace the clients want.

How the day runs

This is a private day trip, not a group tour. The pace is yours. If you want to spend two hours in Bussana and skip San Remo, we skip San Remo. If you want to add a stop on the way back — Menton, for instance, which is worth ten minutes on a good day — we add it. The itinerary above is what usually works; it's not a schedule you're locked into.