Portofino

Portofino is a village of about 400 people in a natural notch on the Ligurian coast, and it is probably the most photographed small harbor in Italy. Pastel houses stacked around a horseshoe bay, a green headland behind, and a piazzetta at the waterfront that has been a yachting stop since the 1950s.

It is the centerpiece of an Italian Riviera yacht charter and the one place on this coast that guests ask for by name. It is also the tightest harbor we deal with anywhere in Italy, so it rewards planning more than almost any other stop.

What to see and do in Portofino

The village itself takes an hour to walk and most of the day to enjoy properly. The piazzetta is the whole point, and the walk up to the Castello Brown and the lighthouse at Punta del Capo gives you the view that appears on every postcard, best in the last hour of daylight.

The Abbey of San Fruttuoso is the other essential stop, a 10th-century monastery in a cove reachable only by boat or on foot. The bronze Christ of the Abyss statue sits in 17m of water just off it, and it is a good snorkel or dive from the tender.

Santa Margherita Ligure, two miles round the bay, is where the practical infrastructure is: a much larger marina, better provisioning, and restaurants that do not carry the Portofino markup. Many charters lie there and tender across.

Berthing and anchoring

Portofino harbor has roughly 250 berths and only a handful take anything over 30m. In July and August they are effectively spoken for months ahead and the daily rate is among the highest in the Mediterranean. If a guest’s week depends on lying inside Portofino, that has to be arranged at the time of booking.

The realistic alternative, and what most charters actually do, is to anchor outside in the bay off Paraggi or in the lee of the headland and tender in for dinner. The holding is reasonable in sand at moderate depth, the run ashore is a few minutes, and it costs nothing.

The Ligurian coast in general is marina-to-marina rather than anchorage-based. It is steep, exposed and short on sheltered bays, which is the main structural difference between chartering here and chartering in Sardinia or Sicily. Guests who want to swim off the back of the boat every afternoon are usually better served elsewhere.

Fitting Portofino into an itinerary

The Riviera suits short, scenic charters and stopovers more than full weeks at anchor. A typical run goes Genoa or Santa Margherita to Portofino, down to the Cinque Terre and La Spezia, with Sanremo and the French border in the other direction for guests heading toward Monaco.

It also works as the first or last leg of a longer western Mediterranean charter, linking the Cote d’Azur to Tuscany and on toward Corsica and Sardinia. Genoa (GOA) is the closest airport at about 40 minutes, with Nice and Milan the larger alternatives.