Half-way between Sanremo and Alassio at the heart of the Ligurian Riviera dei Fiori, Cervo is its most picturesque medieval village. It emerges directly from the sea in the Diano Marina bay, against a backdrop of olive growing hills and mountains covered in the typical Mediterranean shrubland (macchia). All this caters for an exceptionally mild, salubrious climate, in which the balmy marine air, full of iodine, combines with the oxygen-rich air descending from the mountains, and a pleasant warmth invites you to swim well into the month of October. Temperature swings are limited, the great numbers of sunshine hours – 140 sunny days, 165 variable and only 60 rainy days – combined with low humidity levels and the total absence of industries and traffic make the village the ideal health resort not only in summer, but throughout the year. It is true, we have to admit it: Cervo doesn’t have what the rest are offering. The village has neither modern buildings nor asphalted streets. It lags behind – it’s still a tiny medieval village with century-old houses, where artisans and artists ply their trade in cobbled alleys that are too narrow for cars, so one can only walk in them.

And the beach has no deck-chairs by the hundreds that are enlivened by radios and mobile phones: it offers only small and scanty organised bathing establishments; the remaining beaches and cliffs are free and uncrowded, you can hear no noise other than the sea. And the sea water is not lukewarm for the thousands who got in before you, it is always fresh, with seabeds rich in seaweed and fish.
The green hills are deserted, not even a residential area, nor a handful of motels, or at least a highway: uphill from Cervo, around a few ruins of bygone times there is nothing but woods, pine trees, olive groves, all criss-crossed by paths unknown to moto-cross riders.
Then there are no monuments to anybody who did anything grand: Cervo has only an Ethnographic Museum celebrating the ragged Ligurian Man and Woman performing their daily duties.
Then as far as the events are concerned, no jolly gastronomic festivals nor sparkling celebrations of folklore: in Cervo only the greatest international musicians perform concerts in the moonlight for everyone to enjoy in enraptured silence.