Doctor Antonio in Bordighera describes the beauty of this little village close to the shore adorned with palm trees.
” It was indeed a beauteous scene.
In front lay the immensity of sea, smooth as glass, and rich with all the hues of a drove’s neck, the bright green, the dark purple, the soft ultra-marine, the deep blue of a blade of burnished steel, there glancing in the sun like diamonds, here rippling into a lacelike net of snowy foam.
In strong relief against this bright background, stands a group of red-capped, red-belted, fishermen drawing their nets to the shore, and accompanying each pull with a plaintive burden, that the echo of the mountain sends softened back.
On the right, to the westward, the silvery track of the road undulating amid thinly scattered houses, or clusters of orange and palm-trees, leads the eye to the promontory of Bordighera, a huge emerald mound which shuts out the horizon, much in the shape of a leviathan couchant, his broad muzzle buried in the waters.
Here you have in a small compass, refreshing to behold, every shade of green that can gladden the eye, from the pale grey olive to the dark foliaged cypress, of which one, ever and anon, an isolated sentinel, shoots forth high above the rest.
Turfs of feathery palms, their heads tipped by the sun, the lower part in shade, spread their broad branches like warrior’s crests on the top, where the slender silhouette of the towering church spire cuts sharply againts the spotless sky.”
Doctor Antonio in Bordighera is an extract from a book “Doctor Antonio” written by Giovanni Ruffini and published in 1858.