Italian Riviera & North

The Italian Riviera is the Riviera without the traffic. Portofino’s tiny harbour is the picture everyone has in mind, and the Golfo del Tigullio behind it gives a yacht a base for the coast in both directions: the Cinque Terre villages to the south-east, Genoa and the Ligurian coast to the west.

The water is deep close in, the villages are steep and small, and the anchorages are exposed to the south-west, so this is a coast for settled weather and a yacht that moves on when the swell arrives. Elba and the Tuscan islands are a day’s passage south.