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The hinterland of Far Western Liguria has attracted foreign visitors
for more than one hundred years , particularly the British, who fell
in love with, wrote about and studied this land steeped in beauty
and romance, which became in time a hymn to the discovery of the
Riviera of Flowers and its hilltop villages. One famous example was
the amateur botanist Clarence Bicknell, who wrote a volume on the
local diversity of flowers and who now has his own museum in
Bordighera. Another less well known author, but who also based
himself Bordighera, was the architect William Scott, whose beautiful
volume illustrated by his original drawings and published in 1898,
was titled 'Rock Villages of the Riviera '. His explorations took
him up the mule tracks from Bordighera, where he encountered village
after village, eventually ending up in Apricale and finally Bajardo.
He seemed to particuarly enjoy his visits to Apricale, about which
he wrote ‘among all our Rock Villages, Apricale is the most
picturesque, the most interesting in its history and records, as
well as in other respects the most pleasing and attractive object of
an excursion today’. At least some things do not change!
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Rock Villages |
