Dolceacqua & Apricale Preview

1.Start of the tour

2.Parking at Bordighera Alta

3.Bordighera Alta

Bordighera Alta is the heart of Bordighera, the "City of Palms"

4.Marabutto

Overlooking the sea, the Marabutto ( deformed name of Arab origin) is a former powder magazine that still houses three showy guns " Butafoegu, Tiralogni and Cagastrasse".

5.Parking at Bordighera Alta ( coming back)

6.Parking at Dolceacqua

7.Donkey's humpback bridge"

Claude Monet: "The place is superb, there is a bridge that is a jewel of lightness", wrote Claude Monet when he arrived in what is called the Doria village. The Dolceacqua Vilage was born around a castle owned by the Doria family, an ancient and extremely rich Genoese family, connected to the outside world by a 33 meter long medieval bridge.

8.Doria Castle at Dolceacqua

The first document that mentions Dolceacqua dates back to 1151; in fact it was in the twelfth century that the counts of Ventimiglia built the first nucleus of the castle.The castle underwent several transformations. The primitive feudal structure, defended at the end of the thirteenth century by the circular tower, was enlarged and included in the fourteenth century in a larger city wall. At the end of the Renaissance period the castle became a grandiose fortified noble residence, with impressive defensive systems. After having resisted numerous sieges, however, it could not oppose the Franco-Hispanic heavy artillery, which partially destroyed it on July 27, 1744 during an episode of the War of the Austrian Succession.No longer inhabited by the Doria family, who moved to the sixteenth-century building adjacent to the parish church, it suffered the last outrages of the 1887 earthquake.

9.Parking place Dolceacqua (coming back)

10.Apricale Parking place

11.Apricale

The charming medieval village of Apricale, officially recognized as one of the most beautiful villages in Italy. A classic example of the inland villages of the west Italian Riviera, between terraced fields, olive trees, and oak and chestnut forests.https://italian-riviera.com/en/apricale/

12.Parking Place at Apricale (coming back)

13.Chiesetta Di Sant'Ampelio

Saint Ampelio was chosen as the patron saint of the city, not only because he chose the Cape as his permanent home, but also because, according to the legend, he planted the first seeds of Date palm that he had brought from his native Egypt. It is therefore thanks to Saint Ampelio that the Ligurian town can claim the title of "Queen of palms".

14.Finish of the tour