San Fruttuoso Abbey

San Fruttuoso is a 13th-century Benedictine abbey hidden in a tiny inaccessible cove on the western side of the Portofino promontory. There is no road. You arrive by boat from Camogli, Portofino, or Santa Margherita, or you walk the rough coastal path over the headland in two and a half hours.

The reward is one of the most romantic medieval sites on the Ligurian coast: a Romanesque church, a Doria cloister, a tiny beach in front, and almost no buildings visible besides. In summer ferry season the cove is busy; outside that it is genuinely remote.

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A story
The abbey can only be reached on foot (a two-and-a-half-hour walk over the Monte di Portofino headland) or by boat. The Dorias, one of Genoa's great medieval naval families, protected the abbey for centuries and used it as a family tomb — the cloister still holds their marble sarcophagi. Below the abbey in 17 metres of water lies the Christ of the Abyss, a bronze statue placed there in 1954.