Alassio... Welcome to paradise

It may sound pretentious, but that's how Austin Clare wrote when he set “A Pair in Paradise” in 1931 in what was then called the “Italian Riviera.”
A love story set in a hotel in an unspecified seaside resort between a young nobleman and an English girl on vacation with her mother in the Mediterranean.
A fictionalized situation, but not at all improbable.
Alassio, like other resorts, found its vocation as a holiday destination at the beginning of the century thanks to noble and wealthy English families who chose these places to spend not only the summer months but above all the winter months, enjoying the mild and temperate climate that made this fragrant corner of Liguria the destination par excellence.

Always colonizers and sophisticated ambassadors of good taste, English tourists initiated the transformation of “Arasce” (Alassio in Ligurian dialect), which we can ideally date to around 1872 with the construction of the London-Genoa railway line and which we can ideally attribute to Sir Thomas Hambury.
A recurring name in the history of Alassio, he was one of the first to purchase land and plots. He was a man of great intellect and culture, but he also knew how to see the future of this seaside resort.
The Sunny Bay is born!

Today, there are many references to this English-speaking past, from the Hanbury Tennis Club, Viale Hanbury, named after him, the Anglican church, botanical gardens, and many small details that you can discover while strolling through the “Budello” and the “carruggi,” the names given to the main street in the center and its parallel streets, lingering over small details that will take you back in time.

Welcome to paradise... Welcome to Alassio

Davide Amadore