In The Seagull, the well-traveled physician Dorn, the playwright Anton Chekhov’s alter ego, enumerates the many reasons he loves Genoa above all other cities. Chekhov had stayed there in the summer of 1894.
I might have been drawn to Genoa by this testimonial alone. But my daughter’s recent move there spurred me to visit the midpoint of the Italian Riviera, which extends from the French border and curves east to Tuscany. The dolce vita playgrounds of Portofino and Santa Margherita Ligure are less than 30 miles from central Genoa, and a few miles west roost the pastel villages of the Cinque Terre. The whole coast, and the city that anchors it, is doused in buttery Mediterranean light.
