Spiaggione di Corniglia

This guide to the Spiaggione di Corniglia traces a beach nobody meant to create, back to the 1870s when engineers blasting the Genova-La Spezia railway along these cliffs had nowhere to put the rubble and simply tipped it into the sea below. You'll hear how locals named the resulting shore Spiaggione and how the nearly four hundred switchback steps of the Lardarina staircase were built for the village, not for bathers. It follows what has happened to that accidental beach in the years since, as the same sea that shaped it keeps working on it still.