The Nervia Valley runs north from the coast near Ventimiglia into the mountains of western Liguria, close to the French border. The river gives the valley its name and character, carving through limestone gorges and terraced hillsides planted with olive trees and vines before reaching the sea. It is a quiet, largely unfashionable corner of the Italian Riviera — most visitors shoot past on the motorway — but the villages that climb its slopes reward those who turn off.
Dolceacqua is the best known, a handsome medieval village straddling the Nervia on a narrow single-arch bridge that Claude Monet painted in 1884. The old town (Terra) piles up behind the ruins of the Doria castle; below the bridge, the newer Borgo has restaurants and wine shops selling Rossese di Dolceacqua, the local red wine that Napoleon is said to have requested by name. It is an easy half-day from the coast, but worth staying longer.
Higher in the valley, Pigna is quieter still — stone houses stacked on a steep slope, good walking trails into the surrounding hills, and thermal springs (Terme di Pigna) in the valley below. The road up is memorably narrow. The valley gets emptier the further north you go, and the mountains on either side eventually cross into the Maritime Alps.
