Portofino is barely a town at all: one tiny piazza, one crescent of pastel houses, a harbor the size of a swimming pool holding yachts worth more than the buildings. It is the Italian Riviera compressed into a jewel box, and while it has been famous since the fifties, it still delivers the exact postcard, especially if you know when to arrive and where to climb.
The piazzetta and the harbor
Everything radiates from the Piazzetta, the small cobbled square that opens onto the water. The moves are simple: an aperitivo at one of the harbor cafes (you are paying for the front-row seat, and it is worth doing once), a slow lap of the quay to admire the ochre and terracotta facades, and people-watching that ranges from fishermen to film stars. Morning and evening the light turns the whole crescent to honey; midday belongs to the day-trippers.
Climb to Castello Brown and the lighthouse
The best of Portofino is above it. A shaded path climbs from the harbor past the church of San Giorgio to Castello Brown, a sixteenth-century fortress turned villa whose garden terrace serves the classic view: the harbor below, cypress in the frame, the Ligurian sea going turquoise at the edges. Continue another fifteen minutes to Punta del Capo lighthouse at the very tip of the peninsula, a small bar sits by the light, and an evening spritz there, with open sea on three sides, is the trip’s quiet highlight.
Walk or sail the coastline
Portofino sits inside a protected natural park laced with trails. The best short outing: the coastal path to Paraggi bay, where a wedge of green-blue water and a small beach hide between the pines, then on to Santa Margherita Ligure through olive terraces (about an hour total, endlessly photogenic). By water, the ferry to San Fruttuoso reaches a thousand-year-old abbey sitting on a beach accessible only by boat or trail, one of Italy’s most improbable sights.
Eat like the Riviera
- Trofie al pesto: Liguria invented pesto and takes attendance.
- Focaccia di Recco: paper-thin and molten with cheese: worth the pilgrimage alone.
- Anchovies and whatever the boats landed, dressed with lemon and restraint.
- Gelato on the quay: the mandatory closing ceremony.
The practical part
Stay in Santa Margherita Ligure for sane prices and take the ten-minute bus, ferry or gorgeous coastal walk in. Cars are pointless (parking is scarce and heroic in price). May, June and September give you the golden weather without the August crush, and staying for evening, after the tour boats leave, shows you the fishing village Portofino still secretly is.
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