Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car

by M. F. Mansfield

Olive oil and a sweet white wine, like that of Cyprus, grown on the hillsides roundabout, form the chief of the merchandise sent out from the little port; but the whole town bears a prosperous well-kept air that makes one regret that it had not a battery of “sights,” in order that one might linger a while in so pleasant a place. Porto Maurizio’s church is a remarkably vast and handsome building.

Oneglia, the birthplace of the great Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria, lies just beyond. Wine in skins, hung up on rafters to mellow, seems to be Oneglia’s substitute for wine cellars, but otherwise the hurried traveller at Oneglia remarks nothing but that it is a “resort” with big hotels and big gardens and many guests lolling about killing time. The older part of the town, with the wine skins, is decidedly the most interesting feature.

At Marina-Andora is the ruin of an old castle with a ghostly legend to it to add an attraction it might not otherwise have. A Papal Nuncio was one day murdered here within its walls and “in extremis” the prelate called down curses upon the surrounding country, praying that it might wither and dry up. It must have been an efficacious imprecation as the country roundabout looks like a desert waste. Not an olive nor an orange grove is in sight and only a few scrubby vineyards dot the landscape.

At the Capo delle Melle, a dozen kilometres beyond, it all changes and the land blossoms again, though truth to tell both the wine and olive products have the reputation of falling off in quality as one goes further east.

Alassio is a now well-developed Italian seaside resort. The Italians and the Germans fill it to overflowing at all seasons of the year, and prices are mounting skywards with a rapidity which would do credit to Monte Carlo itself. There is a considerable fishing and coastwise trade at Alassio which along the quais endows it with a certain picturesqueness, and the chief hotel is quartered in a seventeenth century palazzo, formerly belonging to the Marchese Durante. Alassio took its name from Alassia, a daughter of Otho the Great, who, fleeing from the paternal roof, came here with her lover long years ago. This was the beginning of the development of Alassio as a Mediterranean resort. And the Germans have been coming in increasing numbers ever since.

Off shore is the isle of Gallinaria. It has a circular tower on it, and a legend goes with it that the name of the island is derived from a species of hens and chickens which were bred here. The connection seems a little vague, but for the sake of variation, it is here given.

Here and there as the road winds along the coast some vine-clad ruin of a castle tower is passed, and the background foot-hills of the Alps are peopled with toy villages and towns like Switzerland itself.

Albenga is primarily a great big overgrown coast town of to-day, but was formerly the ancient metropolis of a minor political division of Liguria, and the one time ally of Carthage. Evidences of this fallen pride of place are not wanting in Albenga to-day. There are innumerable great brick and stone towers, now often built into some surrounding structure. Three may be remarked as landmarks of the town’s great civic and military glory of the past: the Torre de Marchese Malespina, the Torre dei Guelfi, and another, unnamed, built up into the present Casa del Commune.

Albenga is not a resort, since it has the reputation of being an unhealthful place, but probably this is not so as there is no particular squalidness to be noticed, save that incident to the workaday affairs of factories, workshops and shipping. The inhabitants of the neighbouring towns profess to recognize the native of Albenga at a glance when they hail him with the remark: “Hai faccia di Albenga.”—“You have the Albenga face.” This is probably local jealousy only, and is not really contempt.

A short way out from Albenga is the Ponte Lungo, an old Roman bridge of the time of the Emperor Honorius. Savona, the largest place between the frontier and Genoa, is still fifty kilometres to the eastward, but midway between it and Albenga is Finale Marina, a town of one main street, two enormous painted churches, an imposing fortification wall, a palm-planted promenade and a municipal palace bearing, over its portal, the arms of a visiting Spanish monarch who ruled here temporarily in the fifteenth century.