San Remo

“ The former is clean with open spaces, a broad main street, and is dotted about with palms and agaves in sub-tropical gardens. The old San Remo is a network, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous lanes. This old portion goes by the name of la Pigna, the Pinecone, because of the manner in which the ancient houses are grouped, pressed together one on another, rising towards a culminating conical point.
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. ”

“ It is easy too for a good walker to reach sterner scenes than those immediately around; a walk of two hours brings one [Pg 82] among the pines of San Romolo, an hour's drive plunges one into the almost Alpine scenery of Ceriana. But for the ordinary frequenters of a winter resort the chief attractions of the place will naturally lie in the warmth and shelter of San Remo itself. Protected as it is on every side but that of the sea, it is free from the dreaded mistral of Cannes and from the sharp frost winds that sweep down the torrent-bed of Nizza. ”

“ The whole coast-line lies before us for a last look as far as the hills above San Remo, headland after headland running out into blue water, white little towns nestling in the depth of sunny bays or clinging to the brown hill-side, villas peeping white from the dark olive masses, sails gleaming white against the purple sea. The brilliancy of light, the purity and intensity of colour, the clear freshness of the mountain air, tempered as it is by the warm sun-glow, make the long rise from Mentone hard to forget. ”

“ We went flashing along past pretty little Ospedaletti, with its big white casino, and into gay and colourful San Remo, where we bought inferior petrol and paid twice as much for it as in France. I wonder if any small watering-place ever had as many attractive-looking hotels in it as San Remo? If I were staying there, I should weep because I couldn't live in them all at once. ”

“ But to a person liking society in moderation with a few good dances sprinkled in during the winter and a fair amount of tennis, San Remo is an ideal place. Knickerbockers and cricketing flannels are frequently seen, and there is none of that striving after effect so much found at Cannes, where top hats and frock coats are de rigeur most of the time.
San Remo is near the French frontier and so, of course, is a queer mixture of French and Italian village life (for it has only seventeen thousand inhabitants) . ”

“ Nowhere does the outer world seem more strangely far-off and unreal. But between headland and headland it is hardly possible to find a point from which the scene does not group itself into an exquisite picture with the white gleaming mass of San Remo for a centre. Small too as the space is, it is varied and broken by the natural configuration of the ground; everywhere the hills fall steeply to the very edge of the sea and valleys and ravines go sharply up among the olive woods. ”

“ Under these trees the idlers lounge, boys play at leap-frog, men at bowls. Women in San Remo work all day, but men and boys play for the most part at bowls or toss-penny or leap-frog or morra. San Siro, the cathedral, stands at one end of the square. Do not go inside; it has a sickly smell of immemorial incense and garlic, undefinable and horrible. Far better looks San Siro from the parapet above the torrent. There you see its irregular half-Gothic outline across a tangle of lemon-trees and olives. ”

“ San Remo is, like Mentone, surrounded by a half circle of mountains, but of a much softer-looking character. Bignole, the highest, is 4300 feet high. They do not approach so closely to the town, nor do they rear their heads so boldly, grandly, and picturesquely, but they do so without gap. ”

“ Women go about their labour through the throng, some carrying stones upon their heads, or unloading boats and bearing planks of wood in single file, two marching 98side by side beneath one load of lime, others scarcely visible under a stack of oats, another with her baby in its cradle fast asleep.
San Remo has an elder brother among the hills, which is called San Romolo, after one of the old bishops of Genoa. Who San Remo was is buried in remote antiquity; but his town has prospered, while of San Romolo nothing remains but a ruined hill-convent among pine-trees. ”

“ The country round about San Remo is full of pleasant walks. Ospedaletti is only two miles away, and one may take a charming walk there and back in the afternoon. It is an interesting place, albeit a dreary one, for it is the monument of a great failure. Some years ago a great International Company bought up all the land along the lovely bay, built splendid hotels and shops, made good roads and put up the magnificent Casino still to be seen there. ”

“ The whole route is exceedingly beautiful, glorious prospects meeting the eye at almost every turn; the path sometimes traverses forests of fir trees, with amongst them innumerable bushes of the bright-leaved holly, at others it runs along the edges of steep ravines and precipices: many curious and rare wild flowers attracting the eye on the way; till at length, after an ascent of about two hours from San Romolo and four from San Remo, the broad sloping and grassy summit of the mountain is reached. ”

“ Mentone I disliked because of its bath-chair invalids, San Remo because of its snobbery; and Monte Carlo, with all its jargon of the play, the eternal Casino, the band outside the Café de Paris, the clatter at Ciro’s, and the various pasteboard attractions, was to me only tolerable for a week. Bordighera, with better climate and a native population exceedingly well-disposed towards the English, possesses distinct advantages over them all, although it never advertises itself on railway-station hoardings, like Nice or San Remo, by means of posters in which the sea is the colour of washing-blue. ”

“ IV—A DIVERSION AT SAN REMO The Royal Hotel, San Remo, has the reputation of being the best hotel, and the most expensive, on the Italian Riviera. It is the abode of correctness and wealth, and if a stray novelist or so is discovered there, that is only an accident. ”

“ Arrived there, he paid the Customs deposit at the little roadside bureau of the Italian dogana, got a leaden seal impressed upon the front of the chassis, and drew away up the hill again for a few short miles through Bordighera and Ospedaletti to the picturesque little town of San Remo, which so bravely but vainly endeavours to place itself forward as the Nice of the Italian Riviera. ”

“ The language of San Remo is a curious patois made up of Ligurian Italian—very different to the pure Lingua Toscana of Florence, and the bastard French heard in Nice and Cannes.
Five days in every week are bright and sunny, one of the remaining two is usually cloudy and the other rainy. The average temperature is fifty-two degrees in winter. The winds are hardly ever troublesome, as the high chain of hills behind the [34] town act as a natural barrier. ”

“ San Remo is particularly suited, on account of its peculiarly antiseptic climate, to persons troubled with throat complaints, and several really [39] wonderful cures have been wrought by its balmy air. Living is much cheaper than in Cannes, Nice or Mentone; there is capital medical advice available, and very pleasant society. ”

“ Capo Nero on the west and Capo Verde on the east no doubt create a bay, but are comparatively stunted arms. Then the railway passes along the coast and cuts the inhabitants off from the sea. There is therefore no promenade or road along the coast—a stupid mistake, to which the authorities ought never to have consented, and which deprives San Remo of what otherwise would have been its main attraction as a place of residence. The new town contains only a few good shops, in which things are not cheap. The old town, with a population double that of Mentone, is much larger than that of its rival. ”

“ Most people here go to Mentone to get gloves and stockings, and smuggle them back over the frontier to avoid paying the absurd prices asked in San Remo. The new town is built at the foot of the hill and consists of two streets, with a few good shops, where the tradesmen speak bad French and charge enormous prices for the necessaries of life. On each side of this new town stretch the English and German colonies, the English settling at the west end and the Teutons preferring the east. ”

“ To any one who has been accustomed to the exquisite scenery around Cannes its background of olives seems tame and monotonous. People who are fond of the bustle and gaiety of Nizza or Mentone in their better days can hardly find much to amuse them in San Remo. It is certainly quiet, and its quiet verges upon dulness. A more serious drawback lies in the scarcity of [Pg 88] promenades or level walks for weaker invalids. For people with good legs, or who are at home on a donkey, there are plenty of charming walks and rides up into the hills. ”

“ Since the extension of the railway to San Remo, the number of both has largely increased. Now there are nine hotels and pensions in the east division of San Remo, and eleven in the west, some of which are said to be expensive. Of the West End hotels, one or two are situated well up on a hill-slope, the fatigue of greater ascent and the additional exposure being no [244] doubt considered to be balanced by the expanded prospect. There are now also fully eighty villas east and west. ”

“ The icy Tramontane wind is said to be only slightly felt, and that in the west and more exposed end of the town, while the mistral is only known as a high wind. It is also asserted that the natives are healthy and long-lived. With all these recommendations as a health resort, San Remo cannot be considered to possess the attractions of Mentone, and it was with a feeling of disappointment we first entered the place. Perhaps our disappointment was increased by the difficulty of obtaining accommodation, and by the contrast in what we did obtain with what we had enjoyed at Mentone. ”

“ The fact is, that habitués of the South, becoming tired of the artificiality and flagrant vice of the French Riviera, and of the terrible rapaciousness of hotel-keepers and tradesmen in that most ghastly of all Riviera resorts, San Remo, are gradually moving farther eastward, where the sunshine is the same, but where the people are charming and as yet unspoilt by the invading hordes of the wealthy; where the breezes are health-giving, where the country is both picturesque and primitive, and where the Aspasia of the boulevard and the chevalier d'industrie are alike absent. ”

“ In rear of them, though not visible from the town, are other and higher mountain ranges, belonging to the Maritime Alps. What are called rivers exist,—small narrow streamlets, scarcely amounting to what in Scotland we should term ‘burns,’—which trickle through the town (the Romulo after heavy rain was only three or four feet wide and a few inches deep) ; but they do not pass through valleys like those which give so marked a character to [242] Mentone. San Remo also wants the protecting arms which Cape Martin, and Belinda, and Bordighera send out west and east into the sea. ”

“ The climate of the Riviera is not perfect, by any means, but unless one goes to Honolulu or to “the Cape,” it is hard to do better for the winter. And yet it is not a tropical climate—or even sub-tropical, simply one with a more or less genial warmth in the winter time.
San Remo is not so “mixed” in its society as Nice, so renowned for suicides as Monte Carlo, or so vault-like as Mentone.
Cannes is the only place on the coast that approaches San Remo (and, indeed, outdoes it, so far as [30] exclusiveness in the “English Colony,” which includes the small American contingent, goes) ”

“ Better than San Remo, better than Bordighera, better than Alassio, Ardenza will one day, when enterprising hotel-keepers discover it, and the new direct railway from Genoa to Rome is constructed from Viareggio to Cecina, become a rival to Nice. At present, however, the residents are extremely conservative. They never seek to advertise the beauties or advantages of the place, for they have no desire that it should become a popular resort. ”

“ If these peasants are poor, their wants are few, they live in a divine climate, the whole of the out-of-doors is theirs, and, above all, they have dispositions and digestions that may well cause them to be envied of princes. Dr. A., Genevra's physician, tells me that the peasants here are usually healthy and the children as robust as they are handsome. This Italian gentleman is one of the interesting characters of San Remo. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Two miles eastwards from Ventimiglia, the valley of the Nervia opens to the left. An easy and agreeable walk of about five miles up the valley leads to the very quaint old town of Dolce Aqua. On the way we pass through the decaying but picturesque town of Campo Rosso with an open “place” lined with arcaded footways.
FIG. 270. HOUSES IN SAN REMO.
The most ancient part of Dolce Aqua lies on the left side of the river, which is crossed by an old bridge of one span, having the roadway stepped up on each side, and showing traces of old fortifications. ”