About this journey

Recco station sits in a town whose railway viaduct made it a target for Allied bombing raids in 1943, destroying around 90 per cent of its buildings. From here the journey follows the Ferrovia Genova-Ventimiglia westward along the Riviera di Ponente — the coast of the setting sun — where 65 per cent of Liguria's terrain is classified as mountainous, pressing the railway into a narrow corridor between the Apennines and the Ligurian Sea. The original Genova–Ventimiglia line ran as a single-track alignment located mainly near the sea, a constraint that later engineers sought to correct by routing the doubled inland track further from the coast.

That infrastructure history converges at Savona, the journey's end and a station with an unusual past. Designed by architect Pier Luigi Nervi and built between 1959 and 1962, it was officially opened in the presence of President Antonio Segni, yet the new double-track inland line it was built to serve was not completed until 1977 — leaving the station without scheduled trains for fifteen years. Today the yard holds nine tracks and two passing loops, reflecting Savona's role as a junction where the Ferrovia Genova-Ventimiglia meets the Turin–Fossano–Savona railway. The stretch of Riviera di Ponente surrounding Savona carries the local name Riviera delle Palme, a calm contrast to the engineering ambition that shaped the line travelled to reach it.