The Corso Trento e Trieste runs behind Tre Ponti beach like a stage backdrop—palms, flower beds, the occasional wedding party posing for photos. You descend the steps to the beach and enter Sanremo's version of democracy: the northern stretch managed by private bagni with their regimented umbrellas, the southern section free and crowded with families who've spread towels wherever space allows. Above it all, three iron railway bridges span the beach at intervals, their riveted girders echoing when trains pass overhead.
“The three historic railway bridges create an industrial-architectural frame found at no other Mediterranean beach.”
Credit: UnsplashWhite cliffs over a desert beach
The sand here is imported and maintained, mixed with native pebbles in ratios that shift after each winter storm. You rent an umbrella and two chairs, joining the morning crowd of Italian regulars who arrive with thermoses and magazines, settling in for the duration. The water warms early and stays calm, protected by breakwaters that extend into the gulf. Swimmers do laps parallel to shore with metronomic efficiency. Teenage boys dive from the dock pilings. The beach bar makes serviceable panini and cold beer.
By afternoon, the trains pass frequently enough that you stop noticing, the rumble and clack absorbed into the general rhythm of urban beach life. Gulls work the waterline for dropped chips. Paddleboards and kayaks launch from the boat rental stand, threading between swimmers and the moored fishing boats. The scene is neither wild nor particularly beautiful, just a beach doing its job—giving a casino town somewhere to cool off, somewhere for children to dig and grandmothers to watch from the shade, somewhere ordinary and accessible and completely sufficient.
