Bussana Vecchia

The parish church is the symbol of the village. Built in the early 15th century and enlarged in the 16th, it was remodelled in Baroque style in the 17th century. On the morning of 23 February 1887, Ash Wednesday, many villagers were inside when the tremor brought down the vault: 53 people died in Bussana.

What remains today is the Baroque façade, the outer walls with traces of stucco and an open-air interior overgrown with plants. The bell tower survived the earthquake and still stands. The church is unsafe: you can look at it from outside and through the doorway, but you cannot go in.

In the upper part of the village stand the walls of the medieval castle of the Counts of Ventimiglia, around which the village grew. The 1887 earthquake also badly damaged the houses surrounding it. From the ruins the view opens over the terraced hills and, on clear days, the sea.

The studios are the heart of the visit. Painters, ceramicists, sculptors and craftspeople work and exhibit in houses they restored with their own hands, often using materials salvaged from the rubble. You can go in, watch the artists at work and buy ceramics, paintings, prints and handmade jewellery.

Workshop opening hours are flexible and change with the season: in the warmer months and at weekends most spaces are open, in winter far fewer.

Walking through the alleys you notice how the village has grown spontaneously: houses brought back to life next to ruins left as they are, painted doors, mosaics, sculptures and climbing plants. Water and electricity only arrived in the 1970s, in 1974 and 1977, and some homes still look much as they did then.

Respect the people who live here: many of these are private homes, and an open door is not always an invitation to come in.

Beyond the castle remains, at the top of the maze of lanes, lies the Giardino tra i ruderi (“garden among the ruins”): a garden on several levels, with flowers and succulents planted among the collapsed walls and panoramic terraces over the village and the countryside. Access depends on the people who look after it, so check on the spot whether it is open.

A long-standing meeting place in the village, the Osteria degli Artisti was one of the first venues to open when the village was resettled. It is the place to stop for a glass of wine or a meal on the terrace and, on some evenings, to listen to live music.

An old mule track runs down through the greenery from the village towards Bussana Nuova and the sea. Walking it, even just part of the way, gives you the best view of the village walls perched on the hill among the olive trees.