Located in the gorgeous Italian Riviera, Portofino is a famously colorful resort town with a photogenic harbor and rich artistic history. The town is centered on that harbor, which attracts both small and large yachts. Artès now has a brand new type of experiential travel in Italy travelers can enjoy: the Portofino Trek.
This excursion will take participants into the wonderfully verdant Ligurian hills, where fascinating history and mouthwatering food await.
Escaping the Pirates of Portofino With Artès: New Experiential Travel in Italy
Although it’s a small coastal village surrounded by forested hills, Portofino is actually part of the city of Genoa. It does feel like its very own community, though, and it’s an amazing day trip from Genoa. Filled with beautiful buildings, historic churches and great eateries, and attracting the rich and famous, this is northern Italy in a nutshell.
Our new experiential travel in Italy tour focuses on something entirely different, though. The Escaping the Pirates of Portofino tour dives head first into Liguria’s medieval pirate history. This is an active tour that involves plenty of hiking, as well as hands-on cooking experiences in the traditional Ligurian way and with local, self-foraged ingredients. It’s the perfect antidote to the glitz and glamor of fancy Portofino.
The History Behind this Portofino Trek
On this Portofino trek, you’ll retrace the steps of 13th-century fishermen and craftsmen and experience what they had to do when pirates ravaged this wealthy part of Liguria.
When the bells of the Tower of Vendetta of St. Margherita Ligure start to toll, that used to be the sign that pirates had been spotted in the sea. In order to escape them, locals fled into the lush hills of what is now Portofino Park. When that happened, fishermen literally had to become farmers to survive.
This experiential travel in Italy tour begins in Santa Margherita, after which the group will go for a walk in Portofino Park and gather herbs, much like the locals did several centuries ago. The participants will learn how to recognize those forest herbs and how to cook with them to prepare a traditional Genovese pesto. There will also be an aperitif with local products, which is always a popular activity among travelers.
Afterward, the Portofino trek continues down to the gorgeous beaches of Portofino. There, just like the survivors did, the tour group will celebrate the “Grazia Ricevuta”, Received Grace in English, at the historic St. George Church.
Meet the Portofino Trek Operators, our experiential tourism operators
Artès experiential tour operator are carefully selected among professionals with outstanding expertise and passion for the destination history and story-telling, and in the case of the experience in Portofino, healthy cooking and eating, and hiking. Our operators are professional experiential tourism operators trained by Artès to develop this story in a professional, inviting and hands-on way. With those qualities, our operators are the perfect people to lead this new experiential travels such as the excursion in Portofino.
Our experiential tourism operators welcome both Italian and foreign visitors on her tour, as well as couples of families with small children. The only requirement is that they’re looking for a different and unique experience in Portofino, an alternative to the typical day at the beach.
This Portofino Trek combines both history and cuisine in about three hours of gathering, cooking, tasting and hiking. This is not just a cookie-cutter tour like so many others, though. Offering some of the best experiential travel experiences in Italy, this “story” from Artès is about much more. It’s an overall immersive experience, in which participants almost become “actors” in a play. The stage is the tour location, in this case the Portofino hills. Guests will literally walk in the footsteps of locals, who wander here many centuries ago as they fled plundering pirates.
You can check out this wonderful Escaping the Pirates of Portofino Experiential Tour here.
Note that the outline provided on that page is suggestive only and that each tour is highly customizable and focused on memorable experiential travel in Italy. So, if you’d like to make some changes to meet customers’ needs, that will be no problem whatsoever.