Bussana Vecchia Artist Village
Destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake on Shrove Tuesday 1887, the hilltop village of Bussana Vecchia was abandoned for nearly a century until a group of international artists began squatting its crumbling ruins in the 1960s — and never left. Today this extraordinary place, 10 km east of Sanremo, is a living art colony of studios, galleries and workshops threaded through roofless medieval ruins dr
Wandering the Ruins
The collapsed church of Sant'Egidio — its dome caved in by the quake, open to the sky — is the village's haunting centrepiece, now used as an open-air sculpture garden. Cracked frescoes still cling to the interior walls, and a single surviving bell tower leans at an alarming angle above the nave.
Narrow lanes connect perhaps 80 resident artists' studios; you can walk in, watch a glassblower at work, buy a watercolour of the Ligurian coast directly from the painter, or simply sit on a sun-warmed stone wall and absorb the peculiar beauty of a place that refused to stay dead.
Practical Visit Tips
Most studios open Thursday to Sunday from around 10 am to 6 pm; the village is liveliest on weekend afternoons when artists set out work on the lanes. There are no chain shops, no admission fee and no tour groups — just a small café serving local wine and a couple of artisan food stalls on busy days.
Bussana Vecchia is reached by a steep 2 km walk or drive up from the coastal village of Bussana; park at the bottom and walk up through the olive groves for the full cinematic reveal of the ruins above.
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