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According
to tradition, this fishing town situated between Capo Nero and Capo
Sant'Ampelio takes its name from the hospice founded for pilgrims in the
fourteenth century by the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem. The most
temperate town in Italy discovered its vocation for tourism and for
flower-growing (especially carnations and roses) in the second half of the
nineteenth century with the arrival of the first "tourists"
(including Katherine Mansfield and Mary Shelley) and the opening of the
first flower market in Europe.
Ospedaletti has good road links with Ventimiglia, the Cote d'Azur and the
Riviera dei Fiori and was, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a
popular resort with the mid-European aristocracy and international élite,
whose favourite meeting place, Villa Sultana, is where the first casino in
Italy was opened in 1911. The race track was built in 1947 to Formula One
standards: it is 3380 metres long and attracted some of the most famous
racing drivers in the 1950s and 1960s.
The church of the Porrini was built in the mid-sixteenth century and made
into a sanctuary in 1858, although the present Greek-cross form, like the
decorations on the façade of the adjacent pilgrims' hospice, are in
Baroque style. The little thirteenth-century church bearing the name of
Sant'Erasmo, the patron saint of sailors, preserves a collection of
sailors' votary objects. The eighteenth-century parish church of San
Giovanni Battista holds a copy by Tommaso Rossi of Raphael's Madonna di
Foligno.
Two sixteenth-century towers are all that can still be seen of the ancient
defence system: one is a watchtower overlooking the bay and the other is a
quadrangular defence tower. There are plenty of panoramic walks to be made
among the flowers, palms and eucalyptus trees in the local gardens and
along the ancient mule tracks in the higher woodland areas.
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