Monte Caggio

On the western ridge that frames Sanremo’s hinterland, Monte Caggio holds a commanding position. Visible from many surrounding valleys, it maintains direct sightlines with most of the area’s hilltop sites, a strategic perch in a landscape where such vantage points were carefully chosen. The summit is characteristically rugged, scattered with rocky crevices. Its most distinctive feature is a remarkably regular earthen and stone mound, some fifteen metres high, set on a narrow, uneven plateau.

This structure was noted in a manuscript from the late 17th or early 18th century, possibly by Abbot G.B. Grossi. After the Second World War, two young students, Ciasca and Peroni, surveyed the site and identified an earth-and-stone rampart along the western edge of the summit plateau, with a facing on its northeastern side they interpreted as part of a roughly six-metre-square building, probably from the protohistoric period. They collected a single small sherd of coarse, brownish-grey pottery, which they deemed “certainly pre-Roman”. A 2003 survey by the Ligurian archaeological authority confirmed their observations.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.