The Yacht ... Slips, a short distance from rocks ... And behold ... You suddenly discover a hidden ... A small village, Portofino, is expanding as an arc of the moon around this quiet basin ... Surrounded by a forest of green and fresh ... I have never heard an eguagliabile perhaps what I felt upon entering this creek ...". wrote, in 1889, Guy de Maupassant, certainly one of the first VIP to discover Portofino, and hear the special charm . Since then, big names of literature, star of the show, powerful whole world have found here something more than just a shelter: a secluded lounge and elegant, simple as a fishing village, as the precious art of a great director. Irripetibile expression of the work of generations and powerful hand of a particularly friendly nature.

Just turn a corner to escape from and enter into a peace archaic. Going to the streets and trails of Mount Portofino even where the hand of man has not intervened, placement of plants, the maquis, the trend of moderate terrain, offering a show of grace spontanea.Le hiking on the mountain Portofino are equally intense experience of what you can enjoy in contact with the sun and the sea. Shadows sleep, sudden eruption of full light, Mediterranean, glimpses of sky blue, sudden squarci where, beyond the green stretches of the cobalt blue sea, intense aromas, dolcissimi.Un scented garden, surprisingly varied in color and landscape , presents to your eyes off of the exceptional imagination that nature has wanted to bestow.

Night and day a show. Maybe that's why, from the fifties and sixties, Portofino has become a symbol of the sweet life, the place where it happens to meet on the dock port, in characteristic alleys, the major protagonists of the dream of everyone: Hollywood Division, famous artists, politics and industry.

Col. village, square, villas hidden among the olive trees, Portofino is a special cocktail and happy life and privacy; ideal meeting point for meetings and conferences high level. Here everything that has an extraordinary: from a yacht, in the evening in a room; a walk from the castle, the festival, simple and baroque together. Moreover, there must be a reason if a small cove hidden and almost inaccessible became an international name, a symbol of beauty and exclusivity around the world.

Portus Delphini, this is the name that Pliny gives Portofino. It is perhaps a reference to the shape of the promontory, in its peak, recalls the shape of a dolphin or perhaps, as others think, so called because of the deep, ideal environment for these friendly inhabitants of the sea. However, Pliny us attests to the existence of Portofino in Roman. Possession of nearby Benedictine Abbey of San Fruttuoso, passed in 1414 to the Republic of Genoa. In 1554 is erected, dominance, the imposing fortress of Saint George Brown also called castle. The Shrine of St. George the Martyr, the relics of the Holy recall participation in crusades. In the parish of S.S. Martino and George can be valuable sailboats, former Votic and works of seven hundred.

Portofino is not only the piazzetta. 0 best, already on the square you can discover another face of this village that has remained seafaring: lace that women have always run the tombolo with wire Flanders. If you leave the port open here, a few miles, another unexpected spectacle: a hidden among rocks that reflected the green vegetation in the primordial quiet. It, "placed" on the beach, a masterpiece of medieval: the Abbey of St. Fruttuoso. Un'apparizione really of another era, perfect in its simplicity and wise "direction" of a nature impareggiabile.Anche between these two worlds together by a simple and secure sense of beauty, it contained the seduction of a place unique in the world.

Un'apparizione really of another era, perfect in its simplicity and wise "direction" of a nature impareggiabile.Anche between these two worlds together by a simple and secure sense of beauty, it contained the seduction of a place unique in the world.

Portofino yesterday and today


"One angle is Portofino escaped ...."

It compared with the panoramic photographs taken nearly a century ago, you will see that almost nothing has changed:

-- The port has been less than then, and the mountain.

Throughout the promontory, this is the only strip where the woods were woods and bluffs, cliffs. "

Indro Montanelli