Valentine's Day in Camogli: the seaside village becomes the City of Love

It's impossible to imagine a more romantic setting for exchanging or renewing a pledge of love than a fiery sunset or a starry night in the Golfo Paradiso, serendated by the waves breaking on the shore.

It's no coincidence that since 1988, the charming village overlooking the Ligurian Sea has officially been known as the City of Love. Since then, in February each year, it celebrates Valentine's Day... Innamorati a Camogli (Fall in love in Camogli) is the celebration staged by the tourist resort near Genoa for Valentine's Day, with a calendar full of events and exhibitions.

The initiative includes a competition, also called 'Innamorati a Camogli', dedicated to love poems. For many years now, this event has been the highlight of the festival, with prizes for the best unpublished poems of less than twelve lines in Italian, with a section also in Genoese, and hundreds of writers, poets and enthusiasts from Italy and around the world take part each year.

The most beautiful poem, chosen from among twenty compositions selected by an accredited jury, is awarded the Special City of Camogli Trophy, a crystal sailboat suspended between land, sea and sky, symbol of the seaside village, the "city of a thousand white sailboats".

The verses of those twenty poems are printed and displayed along thepier in the marina and in the hamlets of Ruta and San Rocco to make the atmosphere of those days more evocative and enkindle the mutual feelings of the couples, who exchange tender kisses beside the sea.

From strolls along the seafront, between Dragonara Castle and the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta or among the alleyways and squares, the date with Cupid continues at the tables of the many restaurants participating in the event. Here, the joys of the heart meet those of the taste buds, celebrated by delicious Ligurian specialities added to the normal menus for couples. From a choice of several proposals, you will receive a complimentary Camogli Valentine's Day Souvenir Plate, painted each year by a different artist, the various editions of which have now become collectors' items. 

The red Hearts and Love Knots, distributed at the special Valentine's Day Info point, have also become essential collectors' items. These are small coconut fibre hearts on which lovers can inscribe their names, a dedication and a promise, and then entrust them to time by tying them to the large nets suitably draped along the pier in the marina by the Camogli Fishermen's Cooperative.

It's a small rite from which you cannot back out, as well as a reason to return to Camogli in the years to come, to relive sweet memories or see whether your hearts have remained true amid the storms of life.