What to see in Chiavari, itinerary including the main monuments and places of interest, including Palazzo Rocca, Borgolungo, Castello, Portici and Cathedral of Our Lady of the Garden.
Tourist information
Ligurian town on the Riviera di Levante, in the province of Genoa, Chiavari is a well-known tourist resort located in the center of the Gulf of Tigullio.
Its territory, inhabited since prehistoric times, as shown by the discovery of a rich necropolis of the Iron Age, was populated by the Ligurian Tigulli, before becoming an important Roman center.
In the stables of the seventeenth-century Palazzo Rocca, enlarged and equipped with a park in the eighteenth century, there is the Archaeological Museum of the city, which preserves these important testimonies, brought to light in Chiavari, relating to the Bronze Age and the necropolis of the first Age of the Iron.
Mentioned for the first time as Clavaro, in a tenth century document, it was dominated by Genoa, which in the twelfth century built a castle and a city wall making it a defense post against the lords of the Lunigiana.
Towards the middle of the thirteenth century it was a free municipality, then it was in the hands of the Malaspina della Lunigiana and the Fieschi di Lavagna, then it returned again under the Republic of Genoa reaching an important economic and urban development, and acquiring the title of city in the middle of the six hundred.
Under Napoleon Bonaparte was the capital of the Apennines department and, after the Congress of Vienna, it passed to the Kingdom of Sardinia.
What see
The historic center of Chiavari preserves the oldest part of the town called Borgolungo, dominated by the remains of the castle with the tower, from whose top the panorama embraces the hills and the sea that opens between the peninsulas of Portofino and Sestri Levante.
The typical alleys called caruggi, flanked by low arcades, the main one is via Martiri della Liberazione, known as straight caruggio, with numerous shops and historical premises, characterize the town.
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Garden stands in the homonymous square, and was built between 1613 and 1933, following the apparition of the Virgin Mary on the ground where vegetable gardens were once cultivated.
The current appearance of the Church is the result of a restructuring that took place between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, during which the imposing pronaos was built and the interior was divided into three naves, enriching it with sumptuous decorations and frescoes.
