You Get What You Pay For Part II: The Adaptable Traveler

Friday, September 19, 2014
Late afternoon

     I discovered this morning that the path to the church of La Madonna della Costa goes past my door. The church is on the top of a peak above La Pigna, up the old steps above where I am housed, a hike.  The grade of the hill is very steep, so there is no question of rushing up there.  At one point you leave the caverns of the old city and emerge into the light, the city, the port and the Mediterranean stretching out below you, but you have still not arrived, although there is a small church nearby.

     You must climb still higher, and then you see the mosaic of paving stones that leads to the "Sanctorum" as the blazon in the façade of the church trumpets.  The church --like all of the major Roman Catholic churches in San Remo-- is Baroque in style.  The interior is a riot of color and decoration.  I arrived just as the church was being opened to visitors, at 10:00 a.m.

     After, I walked down to the sailboat harbor, then turned around and walked along the water to Il Corso Imperatrice  (the Empress' Promenade), nearer France than Italy.  The empress in question was Maria Alexandrovna, Empress of all the Russias, who spent the winter of 1874-1875 in San Remo.  After her stay, the Russian aristocracy, including members of the Imperial Family, began to pass the winter seasons in the city.  The Russian community was large enough that eventually, funds were raised to build the Church of Christ the Saviour.  It was consecrated in 1913 as a church among the "foreign places of health care", a designation of the Diocese of Saint Petersburg that confirmed its status in the Russian community.

     However, the Church of Christ the Saviour also has links to the royal family of Montenegro, the Petrovic-Njegos dynasty.  On March 1, 1921 Nicholas I, King of Montenegro, died in exile in Antibes, France.  In his will he provided for burial in the crypt of Christ the Saviour "until the triumph of truth in the history of Montenegro".  His wife, Queen Miena, who died two years later in Antibes, was buried there, too, as were their two daughters, Vera and Xenia.  In an example of the close ties the royal families of Europe had to each other at the time, the last king of Italy, Umberto II of Savoy, King Nicholas' nephew, paid for the design and construction of a sarcophagus in black marble.

     However, after the death of the dictator of Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito, in 1980 --and before the start of the Balkan Wars in 1991, Montenegrans began calling for the return of the bodies of the royal family.  With the unanimous decision of the Russian community in San Remo, of the town Council and of the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs; on September 29, 1989, after a solemn ceremony, the four coffins left the Russian church headed for the Monenegran royal chapel at Cettigne, the ancient capital of Montenegro.  Photographs of the royal progress can be seen in the crypt, which still contains the sarcophagus donated by Umberto II.

      San Remo is a faded reminder of an age when relatives of Queen Victoria sat on all the thrones of Europe, including that of Russia.  And the milder winters continue to attract Russians.  There are real estate offices that cater only to Russian clients, all the listings described in Russian.  The fancy hotels --the Europa, the Paradiso and others-- do a good business with the Russian community.  And today on the beach, swimming in the ocean under grey skies were Russians, for whom the change in temperature is not dissuasive.

     There was an English community here, as evidenced by their church, a small structure that most resembles a parsonage.  Today, the English have moved to Spain and the South of France, closer to home and an EasyJet or Ryanair fight away.  Most tourists are Italian or Russian, although not everyone is just passing through.  In the heights behind the luxury hotels, are luxury apartments and villas with high gates and private access roads clearly marked as such.

     This San Remo is exclusive; and it is not dirty, noisy or chaotic.  The gardens surrounding these redoubts of the well-off are beautiful jungles of greenery and bougainvillea.  They give off an indolent lushness,  a far cry from the streets below, where motor scooters compete with Fiats and buses for space on the road.  Like Nice at sea level, much of which --apart from Le Promenade des Anglais-- is dense and grotty-- San Remo in back of the beach, by the fish and meat markets, with their massive parking garages and open-air parking places cheek by jowl with each other, is squalid.  La Pigna, where I am, is a working class district, although not everyone lives in squalor: my airbnb hostess has a lovely apartment with a beautiful balcony view of the Mediterranean.

     Squalor and chaos, living next door to conspicuous wealth --or the pretense of it:  the contrasts are sharper in San Remo.  This is Italy: it's accepted.  I'm adapting.