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Baia dei Saraceni, Varigotti

Baia dei Saraceni, Varigotti historical timeline

Last updated on October 19, 2026

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A bay is not usually the thing that has the history, but this one is. Everything at Varigotti arranged itself around this inlet while it was a harbour: the fortification on the headland, the civil buildings on the eastern slope, the monastery and its church on the hill above. When the basin filled, all of it was left on the wrong side of a promontory and the village rebuilt itself on the other. What is left in the bay is sand, and what is left around it is four centuries of ruins looking down at a beach.

Chronology

6th-7th c. The port here offers a safe landing for Byzantine ships maintaining the links with the fortifications still active along the Ligurian Apennines and the Maritime Alps. It is defended by a castrum on Punta Crena, with the civil buildings by the port and on the promontory's eastern flank, where a perimeter wall still stands.
643 The Lombard king Rotari destroys the settlement and sweeps the Byzantines from the Ligurian coast; Varicottis falls out of use because the Lombards have no fleet. The harbour's first career ends here.
1127 On 28 August the monastery on the slope above the bay is placed under the abbey of Lérins by an agreement between the bishop of Albenga and the abbot Garin. Its church still stands there, looking down on the water.
12th-13th c. Varigotti takes on importance and prosperity again thanks to the ancient port, which becomes an important base of maritime defence and attack for the Del Carretto. This is the harbour's second and last working career.
13th-14th c. The population moves from the port area round to the west of the promontory, where the village stands today, and builds itself a new church there. The bay is being abandoned before it is closed.
1341 After a defeat of Finale by Genoa, the port is filled in by the Genoese — a claim the record itself calls controversial, and which another account gives instead as destruction by the Genoese fleet in antiquity, with no year. Either way the bay has been a beach ever since.
1559 A watchtower is built on the summit of the promontory after a Turkish invasion. The bay is no longer a port but the coast still needs watching.
mid-1960s Free camping on the beach of the baia dei Saraceni, still possible until this point, comes to an end. It is the only published date for a change in how the bay is used in the modern period.
1977 The coastal railway between here and Capo Noli is abandoned for a new inland line entirely in tunnel, after decades of landslides from the cliffs and a slide at Malpasso that killed two engine drivers in 1949. The old trackbed through the village is now the public car park people use to reach this beach.

What a silted harbour leaves

Nothing of the port itself is recorded as surviving — no mole, no quay, no structure in the water. What survives is everything that was built because of it, and all of it is on the promontory: the castrum ruins, the Byzantine perimeter wall on the eastern flank, the fifteenth-century remains of the village that stood on that slope and the saddle beside it, and the church of San Lorenzo mid-slope, which was the parish until the population moved away from it. The 1559 tower and the convent remains came after the harbour was gone. The bay kept only its name — and the name points at Saracens whose presence here the record declines to confirm. The most recent change is the smallest and the best dated: free camping, possible on this beach until the mid-1960s, and not since.

Verified against Wikipedia, October 2026.

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Wikipedia

Sources & verification Covers the sourced claims on this page.

Checked against Wikipedia — The origins of Varigotti are dated by some to the second century A.D., and by others to the Byzantine era; in favour of the first hypothesis, fragments and tombs datable from the third to the seventh century were found in the church of San Lorenzo. After the fall of the Roman Empire the port of Varigotti, located in the present-day baia dei Saraceni, offered a safe landing for the Byzantine ships that maintained the links with the fortifications still active along the Ligurian Apennines and the Maritime Alps. The orography separated Varigotti and nearby Noli from the Po hinterland, protecting them from possible barbarian incursions. The port was defended with a Byzantine castrum placed on Punta Crena, while the civil buildings were placed near the port and on the eastern slope of the promontory, of which a perimeter wall still remains today., This settlement was destroyed by the Lombard king Rotari in 643, when he swept the Byzantines from the Ligurian Riviera. Varicottis, as the military and port centre was then called, fell into disuse because the Lombards possessed no fleet. The destruction was reported by the chronicler pseudo-Fredegar, who cites Varicotti on a par with Albenga, Savona, Genoa, Oderzo and Luni. It is believed that the settlement of Varigotti itself, until the silting of the port that stood in the present baia dei Saraceni, was on the eastern slope of the mountain and the adjacent saddle, where medieval remains dated to the fifteenth century survive., The present church of San Lorenzo above the baia dei Saraceni is all that remains of an important and prosperous Benedictine monastic settlement of ancient origins, as is evident from the finds in the area of tombs dating from the late imperial or Byzantine era, probably of the eighth century; it was raised and enlarged in the twelfth century. A document of 28 August 1127 describes an agreement between Ottone, bishop of Albenga, and Garin, Benedictine abbot of Lerins: the abbot and the monks of the monastery are to be chosen only from among the religious of Lerins, for as long as the abbey can and will supply them; for the installation of a new abbot the bishop privately proposes a candidate to the abbot of Lerins, who appoints him if he judges him suitable or chooses a worthier person; the abbot of San Lorenzo owes obedience to the bishop and his clergy, and in case of default bishop and abbot of Lerins decide together whether to confirm or replace him; and whoever wishes to take the habit in the monastery of San Lorenzo must profess at Lerins. The presence of the monks of Lerins did not last long, since from 1200 onwards the church is in the hands of a preposito, mentioned repeatedly until the fifteenth century; one of the first citations in documents dates from 1213, when Bonifacio, ecclesiastical provost of San Lorenzo, and the canons of the church exchange land with the Marquis Enrico del Carretto., The whole Finale coast became part first of the Aleramic march and then of the territories of Bonifacio Del Vasto. In 1127 the Cistercian monks of the Abbey of Lerins settled in the church of San Lorenzo, a pre-existing monastic cenacle probably dating from the seventh century. In 1162 the march of Savona was constituted, enfeoffed to Enrico Del Carretto, of which Varigotti was a part often contested by the nascent comune of Noli. The monks of Lerins remained until 1177, when the church probably became the parish church of Varigotti -- there being in fact no news of the church until 1356. Varigotti took on importance and prosperity again thanks to the ancient port, which became an important base of maritime defence and attack for the Del Carretto. Meanwhile the population began to move from the port area to the area west of the promontory, where the settlement stands today; here a "compagna" was formed, a free association of the men of the villages with corporate power. At the same time a new church of San Lorenzo was constituted to the west, affiliated to the Pieve finalese, the old San Lorenzo above the port being by then far from the settlement. Given this westward shift, the inhabited nuclei of Pino, Giardino, Chien, Ca dei Mori, la Seva and la Monda were formed and the settlement developed along the coastal strip., In the centuries that followed, Finale Ligure clashed with the Republic of Genoa. After a defeat of Finale by Genoa, the port of Varigotti was silted up by the work of the Genoese in 1341, although this fact is controversial. In the following centuries the fate of Varigotti followed that of the Finale and its clashes with Genoa. In 1559, after an invasion by the Turks, the watchtower was built on the summit of Punta Crena. In 1582 Genoa, allied with Noli since 1202, built a turret between Punta Crena and Capo Noli to mark the boundary between the possessions; the turret, called "delle Streghe", remains today and still marks the boundary between the two comuni. In 1602 Finale passed under Spanish rule, and was ceded to Genoa in 1713., The church of San Lorenzo is a religious building on the strada statale 1 Via Aurelia in the rione of Varigotti at Finale Ligure, in the province of Savona; it is the seat of the parish community of the same name of the vicariate of Finale Ligure-Noli of the diocese of Savona-Noli. The first citations date from 1356, and of the original building only the late Gothic bell tower remains visible, although remodelled in later periods; the present bell tower belongs to the original church of 1578-1585, which then became the canonica. The present structure is of a single nave with a chapel set against the left side and surmounted by a dome. The characteristics are those of the Baroque style, the church having been the object of deep interventions during the seventeenth century: the parish church of San Lorenzo visible today was built between 1624 and 1637 by the architect Andrea Storace. The external facade has simple lines and is decorated with bicoloured horizontal bands in typical Ligurian style. Inside are conserved some works of note, such as a polyptych of San Lorenzo of 1584, a wooden tabernacle of the sixteenth century, a seventeenth-century canvas of the Madonna del Rosario, and a triptych of the Virgin with San Lorenzo and Sant'Antonio., Among the civil monuments of Varigotti: the promontory of Punta Crena, characterised by a centuries-old olive grove overlooking the sea, preserves an ancient Saracen watchtower built in 1559, and beside it are the remains of a convent; the ruins of the Byzantine castrum, dating from the Byzantine era and destroyed by Rotari; and the mole, named after the film director Renato Castellani. Among the religious monuments: the parish church of San Lorenzo, of Baroque forms with a late Gothic bell tower; the church of San Lorenzo overlooking the baia dei Saraceni, of very ancient origins, which was the first parish church of Varigotti until 1586; and the oratorio di Sant'Antonio Abate in the rione of Varigotti. Varigotti is a renowned tourist destination; the greatest flow of holidaymakers is registered in the summer period., The opening of the modern via Aurelia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the explosion of mass tourism have brought the present building expansion, fortunately almost entirely free of "ecomostri", despite the extreme narrowness of the available space, no more than 200-300 metres wide between the sea and the steep surrounding hills. Until the mid-1960s free camping was still possible on the beach of the baia dei Saraceni. Between Varigotti and Capo Noli the wild nature of the coast, with the vertical walls of crumbling rock hundreds of metres high of the overlooking hill, caused continual maintenance for the stretch of railway outside the tunnels: after yet another landslide, which had fatal consequences for two engine drivers in 1949 in the Malpasso area, the rockfall shelters still visible today were built at the mouths of the two tunnels. In 1977 the new inland railway line was activated, placing it entirely in tunnel. The old station is now private property, and the route that passed through the village has been transformed into a public car park. (October 2026).

Baia dei Saraceni, Varigotti historical timeline

Chronology

What a silted harbour leaves

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