Valentine's Day in Camogli: during the most romantic week of the year, the seaside village becomes the City of Love

It is impossible to imagine a more romantic setting for exchanging or renewing a promise of love than a fiery sunset or a starry night in the Gulf of Paradise, while the waves crashing on the shoreline serenade you.

It is no coincidence, then, that since 1988 the charming village overlooking the Ligurian Sea has officially become the City of Lovers. Since that time, every year in February, there has been a celebration of San Valentino... Innamorati a Camogli (Valentine’s Day...Fall in love in Camogli), the event that the tourist resort near Genoa dedicates to the Feast of Lovers, with a calendar full of events and exhibitions.

For the 2023 edition too, which is scheduled to take place every weekend from 4 to 19 February, many truly unmissable events are planned. 

The competition of the same name is dedicated to love poems. The initiative has been the key event of the festival for many years now, rewarding the best unpublished poem of under twelve lines in the Italian language. But there is also a section in Genoese, in which hundreds of writers, poets and enthusiasts from Italy and around the world participate every year.

The most outstanding poem, chosen from the twenty entries selected by an accredited jury, is awarded the Special Prize of the City of Camogli: a crystal sailboat suspended between land, sea and sky - symbol of the seaside village, 'the city of a thousand white sailboats'.

Enhancing the atmosphere and adding to the chemistry of the couples exchanging tender kisses by the sea, are the verses of those twenty poems, reproduced and displayed along the pier of the marina and in the hamlets of Ruta and San Rocco.

From the promenades along the seafront, between the Dragonara Castle and the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, or among the alleys and small squares, the date with Cupid continues on the tables of the many restaurants taking part in the event. The delights of the heart are joined by those of the palate, celebrated by the delicious Ligurian specialities that enrich the usual menus for couples. When you choose from the many on offer, you will receive a complimentary Valentine's Day in Camogli Souvenir Plate, whose various editions, portrayed each year by a different painter, have now become collectors' items. Animating the Piatto Ricordo (souvenir plate) of the 2023 edition will be Notturno d’amore - Night of Love, designed by the Genoese painter Marino Di Fazio. It depicts a starry Camogli, illuminated by the full moon. If you want to make sure to receive it, book your table in good time.

The ever-present red hearts and love knots, distributed at the Valentine's Day info point, have also become collector's items. These are small coconut-fibre hearts on which lovers immortalise their names, a dedication, a promise, and then consign them to time, knotting them to the large nets skilfully draped along the pier of the small port by the Camogli Fishermen's Cooperative.

It is a small ritual you simply cannot resist, but also an excuse to return to Camogli in future years: to renew a sweet memory, or to check if your hearts have remained intact amidst the storms of life.