A STREET IN BORDIGHERA
The old town is built upon a hill that descends gently to the sea, and whose summit is crowned by a sanctuary. The streets twist about, are steep, with steps, and paved with bricks or rolled stones. The old houses elbow one another away to get a little breath, or sustain themselves from falling by stretching out a flying buttress, each against its vis-à-vis, like tipsy men with linked arms hoping to keep their feet by mutual support. For all this coast is liable to be shaken by earthquakes. Diano Marina was the central point of one in February, 1887, that shook down half the village. Baiardo was completely ruined, and church and houses have all been rebuilt. Numerous lives were lost on this occasion. This portion of the Riviera, though more sheltered than the French Côte d’Azur, cannot boast the beauty of mountain outline. It is only when a river comes down from the Alps that a view of the snowy peaks is obtained up its course. The rock is all limestone and conglomerate, and the slopes are terraced and studded with olives. The general tints have a sameness and dulness that is not found on the French Riviera. The hills seem to have been enveloped in sail-cloth and rolled in powdered sage-leaves. San Remo lies in the lap of a crescent bay, of which Cap Verde on the West and Cap Nera on the East are the two horns. It faces the South, and a double reef of mountains to the North arrests the winds from that cold quarter of the heavens. The shelter thus afforded, the focussing of the sun’s rays on this spot, and the fertility of the soil, unite to make the vegetation luxuriant and varied.
By the shore we have orange and lemon groves, the delicious mandarin orange, and the pomegranate, tropic palms, agaves, and cactus mingled with cedars. Higher up are olive gardens, chestnuts. “Tenens media omnia silvæ,” the pine woods stretch to the top of the hills that engirdle San Remo.
M. Reclus observes:—
“Strange to say, trees do not ascend to the same height on these slopes of the Apennines as on the Alps, though the mean temperature is far higher; and at an altitude at which the beech still attains noble proportions in Switzerland we find it here stunted in growth. Larches are hardly ever seen. The sea is as sterile as the land. There are neither shallows, islands, nor seaweed, affording shelter for fish. The cliffs descend precipitously to the sea, and the narrow strips of beach, extending from promontory to promontory, consist of sand only, without the admixture of a single shell.”
The ancient name of the place was Matuta, but it had been destroyed again and again by the Saracens till the year 1038, when the Count of Ventimiglia made the place over to the Archbishop of Genoa; he disposed of it to two nobles, Doria and Mari. But the Dorias were Ghibelline and the Maris belonged to the opposed faction, leading to terrible broils. Finally, in 1361 the Genoese Republic became sole possessors. The town took the name of S. Romulus, as possessing the bones of that saint, and the old name of Matuta fell into desuetude. Saint Romulus has been altered and corrupted into San Remo. Doubtless whilst under the rule of the Archbishop of Genoa the interesting church of S. Syro was built. The style is Lombardic Romanesque. It was frightfully mutilated in or about 1620, when the apse was altered and lengthened, and a hideous baroque façade was erected, like the canvas-painted frontage to a show in a fair. At the same time the interior features were disguised under plaster and paint. In 1745 an English fleet bombarded San Remo, and the spire was knocked to pieces and replaced by a hideous structure. But recently a complete restoration has been effected; the façade has been pulled down, revealing the original features, and the whole, externally and internally, treated with such scrupulous fidelity to what was the original style, that the result is that the church of S. Syro is now one of the finest monuments of Christian art on the Riviera.
CERIANA