How Varigotti was built and evolved over time

The houses stand in the water, and that is the signature. Varigotti is known for its characteristic fishermen's dwellings at the water's edge, in Saracen style — a description the survey of the comune of Finale Ligure uses. They are the building type the place is photographed for.

The oldest fabric here is military and Byzantine. The harbour was defended by a castrum placed on Punta Crena, with the civil buildings near the port and on the eastern flank of the promontory — and of those, a perimeter wall still remains today. On the eastern slope and the adjacent saddle there are also medieval remains dated to the fifteenth century, from the settlement that stood there before the harbour silted.

The churches were built in two completely different centuries and it shows. The old San Lorenzo is a single nave with a square apse lit by monofore; its upslope wall should be earlier than the year 1000, while the sea-facing wall with its two Gothic doors and the brick cross-vault of the sacristy are fourteenth-century. The parish church is Baroque, built 1624-1637 by Andrea Storace, a single nave with a domed chapel on the left and a facade in bicoloured horizontal bands in typical Ligurian style — and it keeps the late Gothic campanile of its predecessor.

The defensive building came in two dated bursts. A watchtower on the summit of Punta Crena in 1559, after a Turkish invasion; and in 1582 a turret between Punta Crena and Capo Noli, built by Genoa — allied with Noli since 1202 — to mark the edge of its possessions. That turret, the torretta delle Streghe, is still standing and still marks the boundary between the two comuni.

The last structural change was the railway leaving. After the 1949 landslide, rockfall shelters were built at the mouths of the two tunnels and are visible today. In 1977 a new line opened entirely in tunnel further inland; the old station is now private property and the trackbed through the village is a public car park.