Sarzana

Sarzana doesn't perform for anyone, and that turns out to be its gift. It sits inland from the glittering coast, a real Ligurian market town on the old road between Genoa and Pisa, where the sea and the Cinque Terre are close enough to reach on a whim but far enough that the crowds never arrive. There's a Medici fortress in the middle of town and another on the hill above it, a white marble cathedral gone soft and grey with six centuries, and an old quarter where people still buy their vegetables and argue about football under stone arcades older than most countries. You feel, walking it, that you've found the Italy behind the postcard.