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Today, I live in SAVONA, a harbour town of 55,000 inhabitants on the Western Ligurian Riviera, that is the arrival and starting point of many cruise ships travelling across the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean and a starting point from ferries to Corsica and Sardinia.

Savona is dominated by its big fortress of the XVI century, the Priamar fortress, just near the old harbour and today used (still too little!) for artistic expositions and cultural events but, until the beginning of the last century, used as a prison, like many other castles in Europe.

Then, Savona has a little but nice old town with 3 medieval towers, the cathedral with beside it a beautiful painted chapel called...the Cappella Sistina like that bigger and much more famous of Rome, because built by the same pope, Sisto IV, that was born just in Savona.

Then, in the old town, there're many typical narrow streets, named "carrugi" in the local Ligurian dialect with various nicely decorated palaces, as frequent in this region where the top of beautiful palaces is reached in GENOA, the capital of Liguria, with the biggest old town of Europe.

About gastronomy, the speciality of Savona is surely the FARINATA, prepared in the oven with chick peas or wheat flour, olive oil and salt.
Garnished with tomato sauce or our local PESTO SAUCE, the farinata is really a delice.

Very nice is also the Riviera in part of Savona Province and the limestone Manie Plateau, at few Km in the inland, at 250-300 m on the sea level.
This plateau is covered by a dense and rich mediterranean low forest, with high white cliffs on its borders, near the sea, that are a well-known climbing place in all Europe and not only.

The inland if Savona Province is nearly totally formed by mountains and hills nearly totally covered by fresh woods, with beautiful medieval little towns and castles on some hills tops.

Learn more about this author, Aldo Bonincontro.
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