Bordighera - Bordighera

Bordighera is a city of Liguria.

To know

Geographical notes

Bordighera is located on the coast of Riviera di Ponente, located on Capo Sant'Ampelio about twenty kilometers from the border with the France, at the foot of the Maritime Alps. This is the southernmost municipality of the whole Liguria: the southernmost point of the municipality corresponds to Capo Sant'Ampelio.

The mountains overlooking the sea cause in the presence of northerly winds (a phenomenon that occurs during the winter) a favonic effect that makes the cold season very mild (the average daily temperatures in January is close to 10 ° C) and, during in the summer, fresh and lively sea breezes mitigate the heat, which however is rarely excessive (daily average in the months of July and August of about 24 ° C). Between the peaks of the territory, Monte Nero (606 m) and Colla Merello (224 m).

Suggestive is the hamlet of Stone perched on the bordigotta hill.

The port is the last landing place for tourist boats before the French border.

"A few houses piled high on a hill that form a labyrinth of up and down alleys, where the shadow of the ancient fortress erected in defense of the Saracens blows"

(Edmondo De Amicis description of the Old Town of Bordighera)

Background

The village was born around the fifth century BC. thanks to the presence of the Ligurians, who dedicated themselves to agriculture and pastoralism, living in fortified villages built on the top of the hills, in a strategic position, of which traces of pre-Roman dry stone walls remain, alongside other Roman walls and medieval.

In Roman times the Via Julia Augusta was opened, in 13 BC, to connect the Liguria to Gallia, along the current Via Aurelia. Precisely from this period is the discovery, in 1955, of an imperial-era tomb witnessing a probable agricultural settlement of the Roman Empire in the area.

In the early fifth century a hermit religious named Ampelio landed on these coasts coming from the Thebaid (Egypt) bringing as a gift - according to legend - date stones. It is a fact that Bordighera then took the name of "Queen of the palms".

Medieval period

In a bull of Pope Boniface VIII of 1296 the name "Burdigheta" (hence Bordighera) is mentioned for the first time.

On 2 September 1470 some families of Castrum Sancti Nicolai, today Borghetto San Nicolò (today's fraction of Bordighera), gathered in the local parish church and decided to rebuild the previously abandoned city. This assembly marked the foundation deed of Bordighera in a modern style: a fortified village, high above the hill and overlooking the sea.

Contemporary era

With the Napoleonic domination, the community of Bordighera returned to the canton of the same name in the jurisdiction of the Palms, with Sanremo as the capital; in 1802 it passed into the canton of Ventimiglia under the jurisdiction of the Olives (capital Oneglia). From 1805, with the passage of the Ligurian Republic into the First French Empire, Bordighera was still the head of the canton of Department of the Maritime Alps.

It was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna of 1814, following the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. Part of the Kingdom ofItaly from 1861, from 1859 to 1926 the territory was included in the homonymous district of the district of Sanremo, which is part of the province of Nice (later the province of Porto Maurizio and, from 1923, of the Province of Imperia).

The nineteenth century was the golden age of the city, thanks to the novel by Giovanni Ruffini Doctor Antonio, which, published in 1855 a Edinburgh, aroused the interest of the British for the city. In 1860 he opened his first hotel, Hotel d'Angleterre (now Villa Eugenia) and in 1861 welcomed his first illustrious guest, the British Prime Minister John Russell, 1st Earl of Russell.

One of these English, the Anglican pastor Clarence Bicknell settled in Bordighera where he founded the library and museum that bears his name; he also founded an Esperanto group and also devoted himself to the exploration of the local flora; his greatest success was the discovery of rock carvings in the upper Val Roia, (in 1947 it became French territory).

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• Wikipedia contains an entry concerning Bordighera
• Commons contains images or other files on Bordighera

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