Maoma Beach, Bordighera: Monet Spent Three Months Here and Produced 38 Paintings

Italy | Bordighera | Imperia, Liguria

Claude Monet came to Bordighera in January 1884 planning to stay three weeks. He stayed nearly three months, working at such intensity that between 24 January and 2 February alone he reportedly completed fourteen canvases. By the time he left, he had produced 38 paintings of the town and its gardens — the palms, the Villa Garnier built by the Paris Opera’s architect Charles Garnier, and the view from the hills where the old town’s two watchtowers, built in the 17th century against Saracen raids, framed the shoreline below. Several of those paintings now hang in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; one is at the Armand Hammer collection in Los Angeles. Garnier himself, who owned a villa here and designed its gardens, described Bordighera as “something more distinctive, more Eastern, more One Thousand and One Nights.”

The town is called the City of Palms for a specific, documented reason: Bordighera’s citizens hold the exclusive right, established centuries ago, to supply the Vatican with palm fronds for Easter celebrations, a privilege traced back to the local legend that the town’s patron saint, Sant’Ampelio, arrived from Egypt bearing date palm seeds as a gift. The northernmost palm grove in the world is here, a botanical fact as well as a civic identity.

The promenade running along the seafront, the Lungomare Argentina, is the longest on the Riviera at 2.3 kilometres, and it takes its name not from any local figure but from Argentina itself: Eva Perón visited Bordighera in July 1947, and the promenade was renamed in her honour shortly after. The beach at Maoma sits directly on this promenade at number 11, pebble shore with a restaurant and sunbeds looking straight out to sea, the Balzi Rossi cliffs visible further west toward the French border.

The town’s literary connections run deeper than most short descriptions acknowledge. The novel Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman is set in and around Bordighera, and Elizabeth Bowen wrote her first novel, The Hotel, after a visit here. Queen Margherita of Savoy, the first Queen of Italy, spent long periods in Bordighera and died here in 1926, commemorated by a statue near the pine forest with her gaze turned toward the sea.

Getting There: 20 Kilometres From the French Border, 15 Minutes From Ventimiglia

I drove the A10 motorway to the Bordighera exit and followed signs toward the sea, parking along the Lungomare Argentina — the beach sits right on the promenade, easy to find once I was on the seafront itself. From the railway station, a pedestrian underpass leads directly to the waterfront, and a flat ten-minute walk westward along the palm-lined promenade reaches Maoma directly.

The Riviera dei Fiori cycling path also connects through Bordighera, and Spiaggetta dei Balzi Rossi Ventimiglia Italy sits only about seven kilometres further east along the same coastal route — a comfortable cycling distance, or a short car or train journey, making the combination of the two a genuine one-day possibility.

The Beach: Pebble Shore, Seafood Kitchen, a Genuinely Recommended Restaurant

The shore at Maoma is grey pebble and dark shingle rather than sand, the seabed deepening at a steady angle, the water staying clear in a way that’s typical of this open, unenclosed stretch of coast rather than a sheltered harbour. Sunbeds and umbrellas are available, the restaurant is rated among the top ten in Bordighera on multiple platforms, with crab pasta and tiramisu coming up specifically in accounts of meals people have returned to the town to repeat.

I’d eat at the restaurant regardless of whether I’d planned to. The seafood here is the kind that doesn’t require much more framing than the view it comes with — the Ligurian coast from a table above the water, with the French border visible in the distance, is a reasonably complete argument on its own.

Maoma Beach, on the Lungomare Argentina at number 11 in Bordighera, sits on the longest promenade on the Riviera, named after Evita Perón following her 1947 visit, in a town that holds the exclusive papal contract to supply the Vatican with Easter palm fronds. Claude Monet spent three months here in 1884 producing 38 paintings, Charles Garnier built a villa here, Queen Margherita died here in 1926, and Call Me by Your Name is set in and around these same streets and seafront. Pebble shore, a genuinely good seafood restaurant, a cycling path connecting westward toward Spiaggetta dei Balzi Rossi Ventimiglia Italy seven kilometres away. Twenty kilometres from the French border.

Drive or take the train to Bordighera and walk the Lungomare Argentina to reach the beach. Eat at the restaurant and order the crab pasta. Walk through the old town up to the Villa Garnier and the lookout points Monet painted from, then come back down to the sea.