How tourism began in Sanremo up to the present day 

The prerequisites

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century Sanremo was a big village little more than a big village, with an agricultural and maritime character.

According to the words of a traveller of the time, in the first half of the 19th century Sanremo presents:

« competent extension, it can be divided into ancient and modern. It is planted the primary (the Pigna) on the slope of a hill, with narrow, oblique streets, partly covered by houses, of not happy aspect; but the modern part in the plain between the sea and the old town, has regular, well built streets, houses and palaces. The cathedral is a good factory;... A strong petiole rises on the shore of the sea, and allied to it a port of small size, but not very advantageous since it does not shelter but wood petioles.
The freshness of the lemon and orange trees, of which the gardens are planted around the city, is a pleasant surprise for the traveller, who after fifty miles, always accompanied by the melancholic olive tree, finds himself transferred to the most pleasant greenery...
On the southern slope of this mountain (Montenegro) lies Sanremo, which includes 9.500 inhabitants, making it the most populated of the Ligurian Riviera... For the tireless industry of the owners, the soil produces fine oils, fruit, vegetables, a few grapes and a quantity of lemons that give a remarkable income... Another not despicable benefice, obtained from the sale of palm trees, which are used for the sacred functions of the Sunday before Easter... The woods of Montenegro produce good chestnuts, mushrooms and wood to burn at low prices... The maritime traffic used to flourish there, especially with Trieste and Marseilles; today, after the loss of the numerous ships during the last obstinate war, the English captured the English, which were reduced to mediocre: it consists of oil, wine, grains and clothes ».

In a census of 1802 San Remo had over 14,000 inhabitants and in 1804 it became the seat of the Subprefecture.

After the disasters caused by the so-called "revolution against Genoa" of 1753 and the following repression, the city had slowly and laboriously recovered; and especially its seafaring so that in 1797 Napoleon could requisition in the waters of San Remo eighty ships of great cabotage to use them in the disastrous campaign of Egypt where they were all sunk.

In the agricultural field the major activities were mainly the cultivation of citrus fruits and oil, to a lesser extent grains and palm trees. The marketing took place by sea.
Only after the opening of the new road of the Cornice, started in 1810 at Napoleon's behest but only completed in 1826, were considerable benefits achieved, allowing trade and transport in general to develop also by land.
The road followed the coast and also entered the valleys with secondary trunks to connect the nearest villages: in our territory, from Capo Nero it descended towards the city entering from the Capuchin gate, then, continuing from the San Francesco gate it reached San Martino, finally heading to Cape Verde. Practically the ancient Roman road travelled in the opposite direction.

The birth of tourism in the second half of the nineteenth century led to the progressive and orderly growth of the modern city, starting from the hill of the Coast, where the Pigna was located, down its slopes, towards the west and east along the sea coast.


Starting in 1828 with his election as mayor, Siro Andrea Carli, assisted by the steward Alberto Nota, began a process of development when tourism was not yet spoken of, and so city life registered new impulses.
In the meantime, given the chronic shortage of water that had plagued the citizens for centuries, between 1828 and 1930, Carli had an aqueduct built that brought water from Lake Nero to the city and that allowed, in 1831, the construction of the first public washhouse and several fountains.
Later, around the 40s, a new cemetery was built at midday of the city, about halfway down Corso della Marina (today via Nino Bixio) and the corner with via Carli, but since also the new small necropolis seemed unsuitable and not very convenient given the extension of the city towards the sea, the Carli decreed that a new cemetery was opened. still existing today as "Monumental".

He was also responsible for the opening of the first sea promenades and the initial stretch of the 'Strada Nuova' in 1843, the future Via Vittorio Emanuele (today Corso Matteotti), the main artery of the town.
The mayors who followed (Stefano Roverizio di Roccasterone, Bartolomeo Asquasciati, Augusto Mombello and other illustrious mayors), despite a thousand difficulties, took exemplary steps to give a harmonious development to a place which, favoured by nature, was heading towards a future in a very different socio-economic perspective compared to the agricultural and maritime activities practised until then.
The city therefore experienced a moment of great development, especially in terms of construction, with the rise of new luxurious hotels and prestigious villas built by members of the European nobility and upper middle class. Hence the need to equip itself with Town Planning Regulators, as well as a study of the city's road network.

The first Regulatory Plan, drawn up by Eng. Innocenzo Bonfante, dates back to 1858.
Others followed, in the years 1873-75, 1880, 1904, in the face of the continuous expansion of the city. However, despite the best intentions of the administrators of the time, these plans were not always implemented, either for economic reasons or simply because they were practically impossible to implement.
In spite of all this, the city radically changed the face of the new Guests, coming from all over Europe, placing itself on the same level as the other Centres of the nearby Côte d'Azur.

The Prodroms of Tourism

A particularly important role in attracting old and new tourists to the Riviera di Ponente was undoubtedly the famous novel "Il Dottor Antonio", by Giovanni Ruffini, written in English and published in Edinburgh in 1855.
The main merit of this novel, set in the area of Sanremo, was to have, in the plot of the love story between the doctor Antonio, a Neapolitan exile, and Miss Lucy Davenne, an English noblewoman suffering from a lung disease, introduced to the English public the towns of the Italian Riviera and the therapeutic properties of their climate, particularly suitable for treating tuberculosis patients.

In his novel, Ruffini described this part of Liguria dwelling on some of its characteristic aspects, such as the suggestive sunsets, the walks among the palm trees and the sea baths, which were a strong tourist attraction for all those foreigners who did not yet know these peculiarities of the far west of Liguria.
Moreover, it referred to family relationships, work occupations, handicrafts, cultivation of the fields, religious practices, feasts and superstitions of the people of the extreme western Liguria.
The most important subject of the novel, however, remained the description of the curative properties of the coastal climate.

Perhaps even more important than Ruffini's contribution to the creation of a tourist colony in Sanremo was made by Countess Adele Bianchi of Counts Roverizio di Roccasterone, who in 1855 had the first villa built on the heights of the Berigo, west of the city, to rent it for tourist purposes during the winter season.
Roverizio, moreover, had already published an article in 1854 in the Parisian newspaper "La Presse", in which, pretending to be a foreign tourist and under a pseudonym, she had exalted the environmental beauties of Sanremo and its miraculous climate, while later on she also commissioned a series of celebrative writings on the therapeutic properties of her town to the doctors Giovanni Battista Panizzi, Francesco Onetti and Giovanni Calvi, to the priest-adviser Don Antonio Massabò and to Ruffini himself.

At the end of 1859 the Countess had been the guest of Dr. Gustavo Próll, director of the spa of Bad Gadstein, together with illustrious German doctors.
The Próll helped to make San Remo known abroad and encouraged the publication of articles in several newspapers. Immediately afterwards the Panizzi and Onetti brochures filled the gap and the first guests began to arrive in San Remo.

M.C. Astraldi, who lived that period of the initial tourist transformation of the city, tells us:

« At the head of the Hôtel de Londres, an industriousness awakened in our San Remo, which, even today, has much of the extraordinary... Almost as if by magic, other sumptuous hotels and elegant buildings rose to whitewash the slopes of our seductive hills; the streets of the city became noisy because of their indescribable vitality, enchanting for the elegant houses and the splendid and rich shops. Even the municipal administration, at the head of which was Cav. Giuseppe Corradi, followed the movement of progress; he softened the city with public gardens; the languishing nocturnal illumination was replaced by gas lighting, and in short they saw long rows of lights spreading their light in the romantic promenades populated by a perfumed and industrious bourgeoisie; the pavement, on which people used to walk before as on linen combs, was remedied by paving the streets; and this city of ours, restored to new splendour, looked fragrantly at the spirit of the forastieri, amazed at the indescribable gracefulness of nature; everything revealed to them that San Remo, converted into a place of delights, had become the main seat of public health ».

In 1865 Giovanni Ruffini, in order to be forgiven by the people of San Remo for a reckless phrase put in Sir John's mouth in "Il dottor Antonio" (« San Remo, a place of strange appearance, narrow streets badly paved, tall, irregular houses, ragged people, beggars... »), he published the revised San Remo booklet, in which he could write:

« I'm really in love with San Remo... San Remo was the first novel of my childhood; I owe some of the strongest and most pleasant emotions of my youth to it... My last visit to San Remo was in 1857, seven years ago... the San Remo he had visited in 1857 had improved as much since my childhood as the San Remo of 1864 improved since 1857. What a wonder that the small town found seven years long enough to make such progress... we saw the Hôtel de Londres, the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne, the Hôtel Victoria, the Hôtel d'Angleterre, four titles which are equivalent to a formal declaration... Yes, San Remo flirts with the English... San Remo will build other hotels, will trace new paths, will commit any extravagance... There is already in San Remo the germ of an English colony that promises a lot. Last winter there were about fifty families in Great Britain, about a hundred of them, and hopefully this winter will see a duplicate number of them... ».

Another of the many important elements that favoured the influx of tourists to Sanremo, as in the rest of Italy, was in 1860 the formation of the nation state, which put an end to a long period of wars and revolutionary uprisings, customs barriers between the various pre-unification states and frequent checks on travellers, inaugurating an economic and financial system characterised by a single currency and a single system of weights and measures.

In the years before unification, tourism in Sanremo was still a marginal phenomenon and of little relevance in the city's economy.
Statistically speaking, it turned out that most of the travellers who came to the Matutian city in the 1840s and 1850s were still traders (35%), followed by day labourers, farmers and workers (25%), landowners and landowners (15%), military personnel, politicians, ministers of worship, professionals, public officials and sailors (10%), and finally carters and mule drivers, who reached the percentage of 5%.
The hotel registers showed that the guests were mainly Italians with a stay of no more than one or two nights, and foreigners were very few and usually staying for no more than one or two nights.

These data testify that until the 1860s western Liguria did not know any form of tourist enhancement of its territory.
The receptive structure was in fact practically non-existent and there was still no trace of tourists in the winter season, the so-called hivernants.

The receptivity and the Great Hotels.

The so-called climatic tourism demanded for the elegant clientele equally elegant, luxurious, even sumptuous environments.
Therefore, in addition to the first four Grand Hotels evoked by the Ruffini, others were born just as elegant, thanks also to the arrival of the railway in 1872, thus beginning the second phase of the tourist development of San Remo which, as we have already mentioned, gave impulse to the new part, making Pigna lose its role of 'heart' of the city, becoming above all a picturesque attraction and abandoning it also to its decline.

The articles that appeared in the newspapers, the effects of the Franco-Prussian war, which had pushed the Germans to the Italian Riviera since 1870, the increased receptivity and the ease of travel (the 'rapid' train took four and a half hours for those times!) were about to bear fruit.
Following the opening in San Remo of a bank that responded to the needs of foreign guests, on the initiative of Cav.Antonio Rubino, relations with many countries were extended.
Appointed vice-consul of Russia, Rubino worked to attract a Russian clientele to San Remo, and managed to convince, together with Countess Roverizio, Tsarina Maria Alekandrovna, consort of Emperor Alexander II, to come and spend the winter in San Remo.
It was the definitive consecration to tourism of the city, the long-awaited recognition.

In succession were built : 1861 Hotel des Londres ; 1863 Hotel D'Angleterre 1864 Hotel Victoria ; 1870 Hotel Des Iles Britanniques ; 1872/74 Hotel Royal : 1873/74 Hotel Bellevue opposite the Empress Promenade ; 1874 Hotel D'Europe and de la Paix ; 1874 Hotel de Nice ; 1882 Hotel West End Astoria ; 1888 Hotel Des Anglais ; 1890 Hotel Cosmopolitain ; 1893/94 Hotel Bellevue and Hotel Excelsior ; 1897 Hotel de Paris ; end of '800 Hotel de la Mediterranée.

At the same time the city was transforming itself by upgrading its accommodation facilities.
In 1874 the first bathing establishment, with 200 cabins, was opened to the public and its aim was to start attracting guests even during the summer season.
At the end of the nineteenth century a velodrome was built in Sanremo in c.so Matuzia, near the Hotel Morandi, with a wooden track made of interlocking pice-pine and raised curves.
In 1897 the "Velo-Sport Sanremese" company launched a series of international velocipedistic races on the occasion of its inauguration. The velodrome also hosted bullfights and international equestrian competitions: in 1910 it was adapted as a football field by the "La Speranza" Society. When this velodrome disappeared, another one was built in Pian di Nave on the esplanade of Santa Tecla.

In 1874 the Passeggiata Imperatrice was opened, named in honour of the Czarina who gave the Community the palm trees that still decorate it today, and it became the most elegant and exclusive promenade in the city, with a view of the sea and its gardens that provided shade to the holidaymakers who passed by.
Moreover, through the numerous photographs of the time that we can see today, we can see this transformation.
The photographers who immortalized the hundred corners of San Remo contributed in their own way to spread the image of the town in Italy and Europe. Today what is left of this documentation represents a historical archive of enormous importance.

The confirmation of the prestige achieved by San Remo came in 1887 when, thanks to the suggestion of the English doctor Morell Mackenzie, the future Emperor of Prussia Federico Guglielmo, seriously ill with oedematous laryngitis, went down with his family to Villa Zirio on 3 November, soon imitated by numerous German and English noble families.
Federico Guglielmo spent more than four months in San Remo, visiting the city and its surroundings, having a friendly conversation with anyone he met. Aware of the incurable evil that had already condemned him, he was operated on in San Remo by Dr. Mackenzie and always showed considerable strength of spirit, which earned him unanimous sympathy.
He was forced to leave San Remo on 10th March 1888, following the death of his father William I, to go to Berlin to assume the position of Emperor with the title of Frederick III.
The departure was thus described by Astraldi:

« On the 10th March the Emperor Frederick III, after writing the proclamation that he addressed to the Germanic people... went by car to our railway station, where an immense crowd of citizens waited for him; he crossed the waiting rooms with firmness and confidence; he got into the wagon so as not to look like a convalescent, a man in the strength of his strength. He shake hands affectionately with his intimates and the mayor comm. When the train started, the Emperor continued to greet the crowd of more than five thousand people, forming a long wing from the station along Corso di Mezzogiorno and Corso Marina to the end of Via Roma.... It can be said that ... the attention of the whole civilized world was turned to our San Remo ».

The city had in fact become very popular throughout Europe and especially in Germany.
Correspondence from Corriere della Sera revealed that the name of San Remo was common even in children's games in the public gardens, which had the train as their object: « the arrival station, nine times out of ten, is called San Remo ».
Frederick III reigned over Germany for little more than three months. He died in Potsdam on 15 June 1888.

Not only the Czarina and the future Kaiser of Germany were the only illustrious guests of San Remo, but there were others who were just as famous. The list is long.
The 'magic' period of San Remo, which ended at the end of the last century to give way to a well-established fame, had caused the profound urban transformation of the city and with it had also changed its character.
Again for statistics, in 1878 the guest list in San Remo recorded 167 English, 171 German and a smaller number of citizens from other countries; in the whole of 1901 there were 21,410 tourists, with an average daily stay during the winter high season of 4,153 guests.

Competition from the Côte d'Azur and Monte Carlo also suggested that San Remo should offer its customers worldly entertainment and first-rate cultural attractions: this is how the Municipal Casino (1906) and a whole series of avant-garde tourist infrastructures, already mentioned, were built, which earned San Remo the recurring nickname of 'queen of the Riviera'.
In 1915, on the eve of great political upheavals in Europe that also profoundly affected the city's tourist future, San Remo was a star of primary importance in the firmament of European health resorts and the first in Italy.

From the guide published by Gandolfi in the same year, we learn that in the city there were 253 villas, 33 hotels, 14 boarding houses, 32 restaurants, 24 concert cafés, 6 Protestant churches, 2 Israeli churches, 1 Orthodox church, 22 consulates of foreign countries, 7 offices of shipping companies; there were also 3 garages, 3 cinemas, 3 high schools, 12 bookshops, 31 sports, cultural and various associations (Italian and foreign), 18 flower exporters, 9 local newspapers, including weekly and monthly magazines. These data, even in their essentiality, allow us to understand what high-class cosmopolitanism constituted the vast plot of the relationships that fed most of the economy of San Remo and the degree of development and well-being achieved by the inhabitants.

Hospitality in the Twenties and Thirties

All this golden atmosphere ended with the outbreak of the Great War when the welcome guests suddenly became enemies, so that after 1917 the Russians, Hungarians, Romanians (except those who decided to stay in San Remo) disappeared forever, and the Germans decreased considerably.
The English guests themselves, because of the war, had a wild devaluation of the pound, so that most of the times they had to sell their villas and return home.

The healthy climate, well known and advertised, had convinced the military health authorities to requisition some large hotels and villas, which became hospitals and where most of the veterans from the battlefields where lethal gases were used were hospitalized.
At the end of the war, a new reality presented itself, because the old clientele, made up of the rich aristocracy and the wealthiest bourgeoisie, left considerable gaps but were nevertheless filled by Italian guests, wealthy, industrialists, public and private executives.

Even if the level of economic possibilities had significantly decreased among those who stayed in Sanremo, tourism continued to maintain levels of exclusivity and elite, referring to wealthy categories, all the more so because the attendance now took place both in winter and summer, thanks also to the many new possibilities for outdoor recreation, attending leisure activities or enjoying the various sports facilities.
In fact between the Twenties and Thirties. Despite the national political climate, Sanremo benefited from people who encouraged public housing in favour of sport.
One of the best was certainly the engineer-architect Pietro Agosti.

Known before as a designer of villas and hotels, when he was appointed Podestà di Sanremo (we are in the Fascist era) he proposed detailed plans to promote the tourist and sports events sector, which were one of the main flagships of the city in Italy and abroad.
For the 1928/29 season, for example, the Agosti Council prepared a calendar of events divided into four periods: Christmas and New Year's Eve, Carnival, Lent and Easter.
Outside these periods there were also the 1st International Rally of Sanremo on 10 and 11 November 1928, the sporting festivals at sea and the fireworks of Ferragosto.
A remarkable success with the public was recorded in particular the Carnival Course of February 1929 with the Battle of the Flowers, the opera and concert season at the Casino, the theatre and magazine season at the Prince Amedeo Theatre with the participation of Dina Galli and her sisters Irma and Emma Grammatica, the international Easter horse racing competition on the Arma di Taggia racecourse in the presence of Princess Iolanda di Savoia and her consort Lieutenant Colonel Carlo Calvi di Bergolo, the international tennis competitions at the Tennis Club, and the Flora Festival.
Agosti also paid particular attention to the realization of some tourist and sports facilities, considered very important for the tourist revival of the city.
Among these was the project for the construction of an 18-hole golf course, prepared by the English architect Peter Gannon and approved by the Town Council on 21 January 1929.
The golf course was then inaugurated on 21 February 1932 under the administration of Commissioner Michele De Masellis, who succeeded Commissioner Pozzi, in the presence of the Royal Tourism Commissioner Fulvio Suvich.

In 1929, seaplanes arrived in Sanremo, taking advantage of the sea slides in the Port and the hangars in front of the Fort of Santa Tecla, used during the war, to take part in an air festival organised by S.I.T.A.R. Società di Intermediazione Turistica Aereo Riviera.
Subsequently, a Sunday tourist flight service was set up as well as an air taxi service. There were also operations to take back the territory by air. A daily seaplane service connecting Sanremo to Genoa was also attempted.
The service was suppressed in 1934, while the Hangar structure was finally demolished in 1936.

In 1930 the Horse Riding Camp was built on the Solaro hill under the administration of Commissioner Pozzi, who took over the Agosti after his tragic death.
Engineer Domenico Parodi was commissioned to build a sports facility in the Banchette region, which was inaugurated in March 1932 under the name of Campo Polisportivo del Littorio.

The mandate was also given to the Compagnia Italiana Elettro-Funivie of Bologna for the construction of a cableway from Sanremo to Monte Bignone. The work began on 25th August 1933 and, amidst hardship and misunderstandings between the Company and the Municipality, it was completed in 1936 thanks also to the work of Ansaldo di Genova. The cableway was inaugurated on 28 October 1936.

Tourism from the post-war period to the present day

What happened in the following decades, up to the present day, is too recent a history to allow an in-depth and serene analysis. And yet it is already possible to identify an initial phase of difficult settlement and transition, which lasted until the 1950s inclusive, which benefited from the ebb of a certain component still wealthy (thanks to the attraction of the Casino), succeeding in welcoming the upper middle classes of the nearby Piedmont and Lombardy areas, who settled in the abandoned villas, hotels and condominiums that in the meantime multiplied as far as the eye could see.

Then there was a substantial change. As an effect of the swirling economic growth of the "industrial triangle" of northern Italy, the myth of mass summer holidays and second homes broke out, causing the decline of the Padanian builders on the Riviera, almost new barbarians who applied undisturbed here too the brutal systems of cementitious allotment, following the model of the squalid suburbs of Turin, Milan and Genoa, ignoring good taste, respect for the environment and the local architectural tradition.
This urban planning approach has also had consequences on the mutation and tourist prospects of the city that an acute sociological investigation has tried to define.

« The upper classes... isolate themselves in the villas, often equipped with private coves, in the very expensive 'hotels' connected to equally expensive 'nights'; the middle classes crowd into bathing establishments, around numerous meeting places, where the prestige of being guests is worth more than the actual enjoyment of sun, air, light, nature, silence... Due to the large number of pensioners and elderly people from the Piedmont and Lombardy hinterland, the ageing of the population is clear: to the point that the young people of Sanremo use to define their city as a 'pensioner'. In this particular case, the presence of the Casino, first class 'nights', fashion shows and songs that attract a particular public weighs on the city... ».

The fate of San Remo is no different from that of other Italian cities: just think of Rapallo. On the contrary, since San Remo was able to build up a very personal image after the war, which today identifies it once again as the 'leader' of winter and summer holidays by the sea (an image made up of sun, flowers, social shows, sports events, festivals, etc.), it can be said that the negative repercussions of the change have been absorbed quite well.

The so-called `crisis', which is always talked about, but which never manages to convince, should perhaps be defined with another expression: transformation of the tourist user. In fact, the winter residential character of tourism in Sanremo, according to its climatic merits, has been maintained, but today the users are groups of retired people with average incomes, who are flanked by the usual elderly guests who occupy their second homes. Then there is the fluctuating mass of guests, attracted by the Casino or by the events of great renown, which complete the winter panorama. In summer it is the mass that prevails, with shorter and shorter periods of holiday by the sea; the rapid turnover, however, is enough to fill almost all the available beds (6,000 in total, corresponding to the 3,482 rooms of the 179 hotels).

As we have already noted, for some years now the efforts of public administrators have been aimed at improving the 'quality' of life of citizens and guests. It is in fact vain to weep over the mistakes or unforeseeable events of the past; it is better to look for effective remedies and new ideas to upgrade tourism in Sanremo, bearing in mind that times have changed and that today's reality is made up of the preferences of vast layers of the public, which is very changeable but increasingly demanding.
The great goals assumed in the past have partly been achieved, such as the moving of the railway upstream, the Flower Market in the Armea valley and traffic decongestion, with new parking areas.

We add the growth of greenery wherever it will be possible, the restoration of infrastructures such as the cableway to Monte Bignone, the reconquest of a clientele that can be identified in the standard of users of Portosole (a private tourist structure that has contributed significantly to the international relaunch of San Remo). It will therefore be necessary to redesign the strategy of image events: alongside the Giornate Nobeliane, the Festival della Canzone, the Milano-San Remo and the high level shows of the Casino, whose prestige is now a consolidated heritage, it seems appropriate to give more space to original initiatives of a cultural and naturalistic nature, with a European scope.
For the rest, San Remo can always count on a formidable ally that everyone envies: the sun and the constancy of the climate, yesterday as today the most precious gift and the main reason for its fortunes.

New additions

In the face of this uncontrolled and uncontrollable situation, from the 1980s onwards, successive administrations have tried, succeeding most of the time but with difficulty, to put some order, starting first of all with Regulatory Plans that would put up stakes as construction progressed until now.
Some historical sites abandoned to themselves were recovered and embellished, the greenery restored in various strategic points of the city.

The Pigna, left to itself for a long time, underwent both environmental and building restoration works, with the aim of making it available to be used for tourist purposes.
Many projects were also carried out, such as Palazzetto dello Sport, but they never saw the light.
In 1974 the first stone was laid for the construction of Portosole, the new tourist port. It took the entire eastern side of the Old Port and was facing the Trento and Trieste Promenade. This meant eliminating all the bathing establishments on the coast that had been for years a point of reference for the seaside life of the people of Sanremo and tourists. Although theoretically the work has not yet been completed, it has nevertheless been operational since autumn 1977.

For some innovations introduced, other activities that were the pride of Sanremo were definitively lost.
We are referring, for example, to the Cableway to Monte Bignone, which, as mentioned above, was born in 1936, after almost 50 years of honoured service, given the burdens it would have had to face in order to meet the new safety regulations that were imposed, made its last run in 1981 and was officially closed in 1995 with the dismantling of the ropes of the 1st trunk and then those of the other two, in 2000.

We can well say that from the 80's until the first years of 2000 the City has enjoyed a certain progressive well-being, thanks to the so-called mass tourism.
Unfortunately, however, this type of tourism was enjoyed by the small and medium-sized hotels, to the detriment of almost all the large historic hotels. One after the other, these mastodons, having to modernize and adapt to current standards, could not or did not want to do so, given the high costs, closed their doors. Some of them survived, such as the Royal, which remained the emblem of luxury hospitality, Europe, De Anglais, London and a few others. The Astoria is still engaged in a restoration that seems to never end, the Savoy has been completely restored but will be reopened as a Residence. The Des Etrangers has disappeared.

Moreover, with the latest social and economic events, with immigration without sufficient control, the city no longer has the characteristics that made it so famous in the world, namely peace, quiet and clean air.
Despite the numerous events, such as the Song Festival, the Milano-Sanremo cycling race, the shows in the Casino Theatre, as well as its gaming rooms, cultural events of various kinds, tourists do not seem to be sufficiently attracted to stay in the city.

For the future it will take a different programming, on the part of the Administrations to come.

For the rest, San Remo can always count on a formidable ally that everyone envies: the sun and the constancy of the climate, yesterday as today the most precious gift and main reason for its fortunes.

[ Free elaboration of the following sources:
- Sanremo, History and soul of a City - Enzo Bernardini - Ed.De Agostini-Comune di Sanremo (1987)
- Sanremo tra due Secoli - Conti, Migliorini, Scajola - Ed.SAGEP (1986)
- Sanremo as it was - Ed Famija Sanremasca (1974)
- Tourism and Hotels - Andrea Gandolfo - Article SanremoNew (2016)
- Once upon a time Sanremo - Giuseppe Silingardi - Ed. Casabianca (2008) ]