Destination: Italy : Villas, Palms and Colors : Bordighera simplifies the Riviera’s more glamorous allure with quiet charm and architectural beauty

This is a city of villas. An attractive little seaside town with a population of about 12,000, roughly half a dozen miles from the French border in the Italian region of Liguria, Bordighera started life as a modest fishing and farming community. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, it became a vacation retreat par excellence. Travelers from Northern Europe discovered this corner of the Italian Riviera, were seduced by the climate and the gentle curves of the coastline, and responded by building handsome hotels and houses for themselves here--decorating them with gables, spires, ornate balconies, mosaics, glistening tiles and other ornaments. Many are expressions of the so-called Liberty style, an Italian version of art nouveau . One of the most striking, however--an Andalusian-flavored fantasy with a three-story tower--was designed by the celebrated Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris Opera.

Both the French and Italian coastlines are full of villas, of course, but in Bordighera (pronounced bordy-GEHR-ah), more than in many other places, they have remained in regular use and in surprisingly good repair, and seem to be whitewashed or otherwise spruced up regularly. This fact adds both architectural beauty and an unmistakable sense of style to the town.

This is a city of palm trees. According to tradition, Sant’Ampelio (St. Ampelio), a 4th-Century hermit who lived for some years in a nearby grotto that now bears his name, brought palm seeds or saplings with him from Egypt, and planted them in the hills around Bordighera’s natural harbor. Today, Ampelio is the city’s patron saint and the palm tree is both its symbol and the most prominent feature of the city’s flora. Though there are certainly fewer today, at one time it is said that there were 20,000 palm trees planted between Bordighera and Ventimiglia--and, by tradition, Bordighera supplies palm fronds to the Vatican for Palm Sunday every year.

This is a city of colors. No less an authority on the subject than Claude Monet, who visited Bordighera and painted the place in 1884, wrote to a friend in Paris of its “fairy-tale light,” full of blues and pinks, and declared that everything here was gorge-de-pigeon et flamme de punch --pigeon-throat (i.e., iridescent) and flame of punch (the elusive translucent hue of alcohol burning off the top of a flamed rum drink).

Today, in the old town, on a hill above the more modern section, rosy pink and deep yellow buildings are accented with dark-green shutters. Down below, between the old Roman road and the sea, the buildings may be mostly white or stone-brown, but they are almost invariably accented with various shades of blue, green or red, or sparkling with gold trim--and, as often as not, splashed with waves of electric fuchsia-colored bougainvillea. Framing all this are the rich brushed-velvet blue of the Mediterranean and the nearly constant powder-blue of the sky.

I first visited Bordighera for none of these reasons. I came here because it was convenient. En route from Genoa, the regional capital of Liguria, to Provence, I needed a place to stop for the night somewhere around the French border. Both San Remo and Ventimiglia were likely candidates, with plenty of affordable hotels and recommended restaurants, but are comparatively large and complicated. I wanted someplace I could just glide into in my rented car--someplace with an easy-to-find hotel and an easily walked downtown. Bordighera looked, in my guidebook at least, ideal.

One October afternoon, then, I got off the autostrada (the tunnel-laced superhighway that zooms along the Ligurian coast) at the Bordighera exit and wound down a narrow road.

Because it was on the beach, I had chosen the Hotel Parigi. This turned out to be a rather nondescript, 1930s-looking place (on the outside, at least), on the eastern edge of town, near the little Romanesque chapel of Sant’Ampelio and right next to the coastal railroad tracks.

I was shown to a small third-story room, nicely furnished in an old-fashioned style, with lots of dark wood paneling and little lacy accents. I threw open the window onto a broad stretch of deserted beach and a roiling sea, stirred by the autumn winds. The beach stretched almost as far as I could see in one direction, and along it ran an asphalt promenade, backed by a row of tall pine trees. In the distance was a line of blue-gray hills--the beginnings of the Maritime Alps, which rise above France’s Co^te d’Azur. The vista wasn’t exactly magnificent, but it was extremely pleasing to the eye. I liked what I could see of Bordighera.

Later, when I went out exploring, I liked it even more. I began by hiking uphill to the old town. This walled hamlet, with three arched gateways, was the beginning of Bordighera. It dates from 1471, when the owners of a group of houses built here, at a safe distance from the pirates who then roamed the coastline, decided to fortify their settlement. As with many walled Italian hill towns, its streets are mostly narrow, crooked little alleyways, opening now and then onto attractive, tranquil piazzas.

Downhill in the modern town, the pace quickens. Cars race past the hotels and private dwellings along the tree-lined Via Romana, which traces the path of one of the old Roman roads along the seashore. Running approximately parallel to it, closer to the sea, is the Via Vittorio Emanuele, chockablock with restaurants and shops of all kinds and sometimes clogged with traffic. Between the two is the heart of Bordighera, a network of gently sloping streets and narrow lanes full of architecturally imaginative buildings worth a moment’s pause.

The main thoroughfare between the Via Romana and the Via Vittorio Emanuele is the Corso Italia. As I stood at the top of this street in the twilight and looked down toward the railway station at its foot, I thought that it was one of the most immediately pleasing city streets I had yet encountered in this part of Italy. The street itself, paved with large gray bricks, seemed not just to slope but to descend in a long subtle wave. Between the bricks and the sidewalks were patches of lawn interspersed with palm trees, oleander bushes, lemon trees and mock-orange bushes. Shallow indents between the trees were designed as parking spaces, so that cars stopped along the Corso Italia were almost hidden.

Turn-of-the-century-style street lights, just beginning to glow, stood every 20 feet or so along the street, and the sidewalks began to fill with locals, taking the traditional Italian early evening stroll. I headed down the Corso myself, and stopped--as did many other strollers--at the Bar Gelateria G.P., a casual but smart-looking cafe where all Bordighera seems to converge for ice cream, coffee and/or drinks. As I sat there at a tiny outdoor table sipping a Campari and soda, I decided that I liked this town a lot.

I also decided that, despite its British past and its proximity to France--and despite the fact that it claims to welcome more foreign tourists annually than any other town on the Riviera--Bordighera seemed very Italian, in all the best ways. It was animated but also relaxed, stylish but unpretentious; it had elements of both hill town and fishing port; it had almost a village flavor, but was finished with a cosmopolitan veneer.

Its look, or rather its personality, is a reflection of its history. After its founding in the 15th Century, Bordighera spread gradually downhill, encompassing fishermen’s encampments and farmhouses. In the late 17th Century, it joined with seven other small municipalities in the area to form the Repubblica degli Otto Luoghi (Republic of the Eight Places), independent of Genoa. This brief moment of glory aside, it remained a small, quiet community until the mid-19th Century.

It was then that an Italian political exile named Giovanni Ruffini (known to opera buffs as the librettist for Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”), living in Great Britain, published a novel--in English--called “Doctor Antonio,” which was set in Bordighera and which painted it in seductive terms.

The novel drew British travelers to the town en masse. From then until World War II, Bordighera was practically an English compound.

Although after the war they never returned in any numbers, there are certainly English-accented tourists aplenty in the town today, and English-accented hoteliers, restaurateurs and shopkeepers.

There are no museums of major consequence in Bordighera. There’s nothing much to do, in fact, other than to stroll and look and drink in the atmosphere (and then drink in an aperitivo or two before a good dinner), something many travelers today many not find alluring. But Bordighera could be a perfect base of operations for further explorations of the western Ligurian coast--specifically of the delightful hill towns hidden in the western Ligurian entroterra, or backcountry. These towns are some of the great undiscovered tourist treasures of northern Italy, and almost any road heading inland will lead to stunning landscapes and jewel-like walled villages--little-known sites with surprisingly ornate churches and elegantly designed little squares.

One of the most attractive and easily accessible of the towns of the interior is Dolceacqua, about five miles from Bordighera in the Val di Nervia (take the road from Camporosso, just next door to Bordighera on the Ventimiglia side). Famous for its wine--especially a light red called Rossese di Dolceacqua--it is a storybook-pretty place. The Nervia River runs through it, and above the river the ruined 12th- to 15th-Century castle of the Doria family, a great Genoese dynasty, stands like a ragged sentinel.

Terraced vines rise on the hills above and around the castle, while beneath it stands a row of well-proportioned houses in pastel colors--pale green, yellow, faint pink--all with shutters in various shades of green. Near the houses is an exquisite Romanesque church. An ancient arched stone bridge (Monet called it “the model of lightness” in design) leads across the river to the road from Camporosso and the oak-shaded Piazza Garibaldi--onto which faces one of the best restaurants in the region, Gastone.

Sitting here and gazing out at medieval Dolceacqua, the visitor will feel many miles, and many centuries, away from the coastal bustle. But, after a while, it’s nice to know that the coastal bustle--at least Bordighera’s jaunty, low-key version of it--is just 10 minutes away.

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GUIDEBOOK

Border Days in Bordighera

Getting there: The nearest international airport to Bordighera is Nice/Co^te d’Azur in Nice, about a 45-minute drive by superhighway (or autostrada) .

Where to stay: Grand Hotel Cap Ampelio, Via Virgilio 5, from the U.S. telephone 011-39-184-264-333, fax 011-39-184-264-244. A “grand” hotel in name and comparative size (104 rooms) only, this rather dreary place has two things to recommend it: its hilltop location, which affords superb views, and its swimming pool, surrounded by semitropical gardens. Rates: $75-$130.

Hotel Bordighera e Terminus, Corso Italia 21, tel. 011-39-184-260-561, fax 011-39-184-265-727. A plain but more than adequate hotel, clean and friendly, on the most beautiful street in town (which can be noisy in the summer). Rates: $75-$80.

Hotel Parigi, Lungomare Argentina 16, tel. 011-39-184-261-406, fax 011-39-184-260-421. Very well-located right on the seafront promenade (though also near railroad tracks). Rooms are simple but comfortable; accommodations on the top floor are particularly nice. Rates: $85-$135.

Where to eat: Chez Louis, Corso Italia 30, local tel. 261-602. Thoroughly Italian despite its name, this is an affable trattoria, usually crowded, with good simple food and some nice wines; about $65 for two (food only). La Via Romana, Via Romana 57, local tel. 266-681. The best restaurant in town, elegant and expensive, in which tuxedo-clad waiters serve refined versions of Ligurian cuisine (disk-shaped corzetti pasta with red mullet sauce, filet of sea bass with “trumpet” squash--a kind of long, crooked zucchini--and oregano) in a dining room that positively glows with light wood and turn-of-the-century floral frescoes; about $100 for two. Le Chaudron, Via Vittoria Emanuele, local tel. 263-592. Sophisticated Italian food with some Ligurian flavors (the brandacujun , puree of dried cod, is particularly good), cooked by a French-born chef; about $75 for two (food only). Gastone, Piazza Garibaldi, local tel. 206-577. Hearty mountain food, with such specialties as ravioli stuffed with pureed artichokes and thyme and baby goat stewed with local white beans; about $50 for two.

For more information: Italian National Tourist Office, Italian Government Tourist Board, 12400 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Los Angeles 90025, (310) 820-0098; fax (310) 820-6357.