Detour #148: The Most Glamorous Road in Italy
Photo Shutterstock
What it lacks in length, the road from Rapallo to Portofino makes up for in sheer glitz, according to Simon Heptinstall.
What is Europe’s most glamorous stretch of road? The creative team is sitting around the marketing agency’s formica table, coffees going cold, beards being earnestly scratched.
Someone explains that the manufacturer wants to portray its new convertible model in a fabulously glamorous location (to justify its elevated price tag).
Lucky they have a seasoned freeloading Detourist in the room. Me. And I am able to tell them that the best photo location will be driving along the Italian Riviera to Portofino on the SP227.
This south-facing sun-blasted stretch starts at the millionaires’ resort of Rapallo. It then wiggles for six miles along a gorgeous rocky shoreline to Portofino, the ultimate billionaires’ bolthole that makes Rapallo look cheapskate in comparison. It is sheer glamour in the form of smooth tarmac.
Portofino is Italy’s most expensive address: the Pirelli family have a villa overlooking the harbour, Giorgio Armani parks his yacht in the harbour, and George Clooney has a permanent parking space for his motorbike.
You’re already thinking this is all going to be about some lucky journalist having a flashy free drive in a Ferrari, maybe a Lambo, perhaps an Alfa at a push. But my brand pedigree is a little less elevated. This drive is part of the launch campaign for the Peugeot 308CC.
This rather modest end of motoring promotion involves the writer (me), art director and photographer plus all our luggage and photo gear squashing into the almost bootless two-door to drive non-stop all the way down to Italy.
No wonder we explode out of the doors onto the pavement when we arrive at the promenade at Rapallo. Well-dressed passers-by look aghast. At least the sparkling seaside town fulfils the ultra-glam brief, even if neither the car nor its occupants do.
Photo Brendan Greenway / Unsplash
Amid pastel painted hotels, swaying yachts and palm-fringed promenades we set off west along the peninsular. This road, built in the fifties, clings to jagged cliffs a few feet above the Ligurian Sea. The other side rises steeply, colourful flowers dangling over the rocks. The sea is impossibly blue and ornate period villas peeking from the trees are a dazzling pink.
Before the road was built, Portofino could only be approached by boat. There’s no other route. So today’s celebrity supercars potter along with tour buses and gawking trippers. We tackle it at sunrise to avoid any traffic.
Sometimes the road widens a little as you curl round into a little fishing village long since absorbed into the Riviera. We pass dog-walkers glittering in designer shades and jewellery, cyclists in team lycra on the latest carbon, bronzed deck-hands on metallic blue mopeds heading for duty onboard one of the floating palaces.
After yet another yacht harbour at Santa Margherita, the villas start thinning out and the SP227 twists along a picturesque rural stretch. The overhanging trees are part of the Regional Natural Park protecting most of the peninsular.
Photo Shutterstock
The sea is right next to you and the barriers are sturdy low stone walls topped by railings. Nothing obscures glittering views stretching across the bay to resorts and green mountains on the far side.
The roads slips into Portofino behind seafront villas, passing their rear entrances, staff parking spaces and firmly shuttered windows. You’ll eventually have to park yourself too. It will probably cost a suitably glamorous amount. Then you’ll be able to walk to reach the landmark harbourside with its galleries, cafes and bars proudly displaying photos of the day Madonna, Matt Damon or Maria Carey was a customer.
Photo Kristine Tanne / Unsplash
With the prestige of the mighty Peugeot brand to help us negotiate with a local traffic policeman we manage to park on this celebrated waterfront. We unload all our belongings and each other. The art director and I eat ice creams while photographer Simon Stuart-Miller goes to work.
The cheesy shoot in this most-photographed spot would turn out to be loved by marketing bods back in London. I end up preferring a later photo though.
I dump the art director at a car park with the luggage, then drive with the photographer balanced outrageously on the boot as we tackle the SP227 again. The resulting photo is one of the best of me ever taken, mainly as it avoids showing my weak point – my entire face. Instead it features me at work amid the blurred roadside of the winding SP227. I look like a proper driver in an exciting open-top cockpit, even though we’re travelling at single-figure mphs. In fact, if you don’t look too closely, it’s almost, er, glamorous.
Photo Simon Stuart-Miller