Sanremo

Sanremo began as the Roman settlement of Matutia, or Villa Matutiana, and its people still sometimes call themselves matuziani. In the early Middle Ages, under the threat of Saracen raids, the population moved to higher ground, where the nobility built a castle and the walled village of La Pigna, named for the way its houses wind around the hill. The name Sanremo is not from a Saint Remus, as is often said, but a contraction of Sant'Eremo di San Romolo, the hermitage of Romulus of Genoa.

The town passed from the counts of Ventimiglia to the bishops of Genoa, who sold it to the Doria and De Mari families in 1297, and became a free town in the second half of the 15th century. It resisted Genoese control: in 1753, after years of conflict, it rose against the republic, which then built the fortress of Santa Tecla by the port, long used as a prison. After French rule it passed to the Kingdom of Sardinia at the Restoration.

Tourism, drawn by the mild climate, transformed it. Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia wintered here in 1874, Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Nicholas II also stayed, and Alfred Nobel made Sanremo his home and died here in 1896. In April 1920 the San Remo conference of the Allied powers allocated League of Nations mandates over former Ottoman lands in the Middle East, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia; the last Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI, died in the town in 1926. In 1972 Sanremo saw the first public demonstration for gay rights in Italy.

Song is Sanremo's national fame. The Festival della Canzone Italiana has been held here since 1951, first in the casino and since 1977 at the Ariston; it inspired the Eurovision Song Contest, and Domenico Modugno's "Nel blu, dipinto di blu" — "Volare" — was first presented on its stage. In autumn the Premio Tenco honours songwriters, and the town has a state-recognised symphony orchestra that gives some 120 concerts a year, most in the casino's theatre.

Sport puts the town on screens too. Milan–San Remo, the longest professional one-day race in modern road cycling in Europe, finishes here each March after the climb of the Poggio, and the Rallye Sanremo was a round of the World Rally Championship from 1973 to 2003. The casino, open since 1905, is one of the few in Italy, and the town is widely accepted as the birthplace of telesina, a five-card stud poker game.

Literature and exile left their mark. Italo Calvino grew up here, and his novels, including Il Barone Rampante, carry the memory of the town; Edward Lear lived and died here, and Luigi Pirandello was briefly the casino's artistic director. Each 10 December flowers sent from Sanremo decorate the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm. Locals distinguish sanremaschi, from old Sanremo families, from sanremesi, residents with roots elsewhere.

About 53,000 people live in the municipality, which stretches from the coast up to chestnut woods and pastures on the slopes of Monte Bignone. Some 7,800 residents are foreign nationals, the largest groups from Romania, Morocco and Bangladesh.

The economy rests on tourism and on flowers. The first band of hills behind the town is covered in greenhouses, and Sanremo, with neighbouring Taggia, Bordighera and Ospedaletti, grows cut flowers for the international market. Olive oil is the other crop: the hills grow the Taggiasca olive, and the area's extra virgin oil has protected designation of origin. The casino, the festival and the harbours, including the Portosole marina, bring employment of their own.

The rhythm is that of a resort: busy summer beaches, a winter season of mild days, and festival week in February, when the town fills with television crews. Daily life moved closer to the sea's edge after the railway was rerouted inland and its old seaside line became a cycle path, now used by residents for exercise and short trips along the coast.

Sanremo eats the Ligurian way, with herbs, vegetables, olive oil and baked goods at the centre. Its own speciality is sardenaira, a cheese-free pizza older than the Neapolitan kind and close to the Provençal pissaladière; in Sanremo it is topped with salted anchovies, local olives, garlic cloves and capers. Its name is linked to the admiral Andrea Doria, whose favourite food is said to have been bread with oil, garlic and salted anchovy.

Bakeries and focaccerie sell focaccia, plain or with onions, and farinata, a thin, unleavened pancake of chickpea flour baked in wide pans and also eaten across the border in Nice as socca. Torta verde, a savoury pie of greens, belongs to the same tradition of vegetable tarts that runs along the Ligurian coast.

Taggiasca olives are grown in the hills around the town and served whole or pressed into the local oil. Pesto, the basil sauce that is uniquely Ligurian, is a staple here too, and the wines of the western Riviera, including Vermentino, Pigato and the red Rossese di Dolceacqua from the valley just inland, are poured in the town's restaurants.