Parco Naturale Regionale di Montemarcello-Magra-Vara
Less than 30 km from Sestri Levante's beach umbrellas, the Apennine foothills of the Vara river valley belong to a protected regional park where the landscape shifts dramatically from Riviera glamour to chestnut forests, medieval hamlets and near-total silence.
The Vara Valley Villages
The villages of Varese Ligure and Brugnato, reachable by local bus or car in under an hour from Sestri Levante, offer a completely different face of Liguria that most coastal tourists never see. Varese Ligure is famous for its perfectly preserved circular medieval borgo and for being one of the first municipalities in Italy to achieve 100% renewable energy — a fact the locals are rightly proud of.
The weekly market in Varese Ligure on Friday mornings sells organic cheeses, cured meats from the Ligurian Apennines, wild mushroom pastes and chestnut flour — ingredients that don't appear on the coast at all.
Chestnut Forests and Hiking
The park's trail network connects ancient mule paths (the so-called vie del sale, salt roads) that once linked the coast to the Po Valley. Day hikes of 10–15 km through chestnut and oak forest are well-marked and largely uncrowded even in August, when the coast is heaving.
Autumn is the most spectacular season: from mid-October the chestnut canopy turns amber and gold, mushroom foragers appear on every path, and the air smells of woodsmoke and damp earth — a complete sensory reset after the sunscreen-and-gelato world below.
Getting There and Back
From Sestri Levante train station, regional buses run to Varese Ligure (approximately 50 minutes, €3–4 each way) operated by ATP Esercizio. The service is infrequent — check the timetable at atpesercizio.it before you go and plan around two or three buses per day.
A hire car gives far more flexibility and opens up smaller hamlets such as Cassego and Torpiana, which are genuinely off the tourist map. Combine a morning in the valley with an afternoon back on the beach for the definitive Sestri Levante contrast day.
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