The Italian resort beloved by everybody from Roman philosophers to Madonna

The travel world is often obsessed with the search for both the exquisite unknown and the freshly heated hotspot. Portofino, dotting the edge of the Italian Riviera 20 miles east of Genoa, is neither of these things. You could not describe it as a secret; you certainly cannot call it “new”. And yet, few parts of the Mediterranean shore can match it for chic appeal.

With the weather beginning to brighten across Europe, the town will be dusting off its welcome mat for the various celebrities who will step into its midst this summer. Virtually speaking, at least – Portofino is far too discreet in its hospitality, and far too versed in the rituals and privacy requirements of the A-list, to deploy anything quite as rudimentary as a red carpet.

As a result, it will host stars of stage and screen, of sports-field and business acumen, as the temperature rises. Recent distinguished guests have included Madonna, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Steven Spielberg and the American golfer Dustin Johnson. Each will have come with expectations of comfort, calm, and an absence of any need for interaction with the general public.

Of course, whichever famous figures are chauffeur-driven into town in the coming months, they will only be following a trail of well-heeled footsteps that has been visible in the sand here for, well, about 2,000 years.

Portofino may be small; a former fishing harbour with an off-season population of a mere 379. But in its reputation and location – pitched roughly midway between Liguria’s capital city and the gorgeous waterside villages of the Cinque Terre – it is an Italian giant.

You can go as far back as the first century AD to find reference; it pops up in the musings of Pliny the Elder, the greatest writer of the era, as “Portus Delphini”.

You might say that it has always been well-connected. The SS1 – the arterial Italian highway (Strada Statale) that passes just above it, on its 433-mile journey between Rome and Ventimiglia (almost) on the French border – came into existence as the ancient thoroughfare of the Via Aurelia.

With its sheltered bay, Portofino would be aggressively coveted for the next 18 centuries; tussled over by the various medieval powers of Genoa, Venice and Florence. It was even, as of 1815, formally tied to Sardinia. But when the modern Italy finally took shape in 1861, its destiny started to change – from fighting and fishing to one of finesse and fame.

Some of this was down to an Englishman. In 1867, Montague Yeats-Brown, the British consul in Genoa, purchased what would become known as the Castello Brown – a stronghold on a hill above the port which had been fortified since Roman times.

He commissioned the gifted Portuguese-Italian architect Alfredo d’Andrade to remodel this military eyrie as a sophisticated home. And with this, a torch was lit; a scene set. The property would become a magnet for aristocratic and well-to-do travellers, who would make the last three-mile leg of their journey down from the highway (at Santa Margherita Ligure) by horse-and-cart.

Come the Roaring Twenties, Castello Brown was a fixture of Riviera revelry. In 1922, the British novelist Elizabeth von Arnim published The Enchanted April – the story of four society ladies escaping London and the drudgeries of married life for Liguria and a variety of self-discoveries. A best-seller, it further popularised Portofino as a destination; it was based on the author’s own stay at Castello Brown. It would flutter back into life as an Oscar-nominated movie – with Miranda Richardson in one of the key roles – in 1991.

The book’s prose is no less seductive for the distance of more than a century.

“All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered at her feet,” von Armin wrote, placing lead character Lotty Wilkins firmly into her setting. “The sun poured in on her; the sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay, the lovely mountains – exquisitely different in colour – were asleep too in the light. And underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose colours of the mountains and the sea, like a great black sword.”

Other feted names would follow. Not least Rex Harrison. Shortly after launching into his second marriage (1943-1957), to the German starlet Lilli Palmer, the actor ordered the construction of San Genesio, the Portofino villa that would become one of his favourite places on earth. He would use it to host glittering parties – the likes of Laurence Olivier, the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson in attendance. It was a home so beloved that some of Harrison’s ashes were scattered there after his death in 1990.

Here in 2025, many of the with-entourage incomers instruct their drivers to aim for the Hotel Splendido, the aptly named five-star retreat that is now run by the Belmond group. Originally a Benedictine monastery, it has operated as a luxury retreat since 1901. Grace Kelly was a regular guest in the Sixties, while at home 130 miles along the coastline as Princess of Monaco. Charlie Chaplin, Maria Callas and Winston Churchill all checked in at one point or another. More recently, Beyoncé has kicked off her heels in one of the property’s palatial suites.

Naturally, many of the town’s higher-worth tourists prefer to arrive by water, mooring their super-yachts in its gentle bay. But here, again, they are only following a celebrated example. Portofino’s most impressive medieval visitor was Richard the Lionheart, who docked in its harbour in August 1190, en route to Sicily and (ultimately) the Third Crusade – before shedding his armour for a few nights of feasting in the hilltop Castello.

History does not record what impression the town left on the man on whom the title “Richard I of England” always sat uneasily – notoriously, the king spent less than six months of his ten-year reign on “home” soil. But perhaps, when he succumbed to the gangrenous consequences of a crossbow wound just nine bloody years later, it was the sun-dappled shallows of Liguria, rather than Winchester in winter, that he saw in his dying visions.

This article was first published in August 2023, and has been revised and update.