In our hinterland is located the Argentina Valley. Once Taggia is left behind, traveling by provincial road, the nature becomes undisputed protagonist of the valley lying behind, a territory closed between steep slopes, reluctant to the passage of men, covered with thick forests, scattered by medieval villages remained almost untouched, inside which still today the past designs its ancient plots.

Campo Marzio is a small mound in the most accented bottleneck of the river, marked by remains of a pre-Roman town and by its subsequent Roman fortifications. The first town of the Valle Argentina is Badalucco in a crossroad position for itineraries from the bottom of the valley towards the mountain. The village throngs its rough-hewn stone houses on the hill in front of Mount Faudo. In the village, made of stone, to invade every corner and take advantage of every cleavage, one finds imposing arcane figures nested in frescoes and, in the damp and silent alleyways, a permanent art gallery in the open exhibits sculptures ceramics and sculptured slate. The “sagra du stocafissu a baiicogna” is the colorful touch that attracts to the village, during the month of September of each year, throngs of tourists and “gourmets”.

Following the provincial road, but turning right and after some short bends, you meet Montalto Ligure in a panoramic position. The legend has it that, around the year one thousand, a young married couple who escaped from the “jus primae noctis” (the right of the first night), established this village. Here the Romanesque parish church of San Giorgio preserves valuable frescoes; the baroque parish church is rich of prestigious paintings, such as polyptych by Ludovico Breashed this village. Here the Romanesque parish church of San Giorgio preserves valuable frescoes; the baroque parish church is rich of prestigious paintings, such as polyptych by Ludovico Brea.

Carpasio is a mountain village, with its low houses with slate roofs, impressive because of the suggestion given by the overlapping of its alleyways and its covered passageways, dominated by the majestic bell tower of the church of Sant’ Antonino. Returning on the provincial road, going up the valley, the traveler meets the village of the twenty-three watermills, Molini di Triora, with its fifteenth century origin baroque parish church and the sanctuary of Nostra Signora della Month. Here, every year in September, vacationers from the coast, converge for a meeting of great gastronomy, the “sagra delle lumache” (the snail festival). Also worthy of being visited, are the neighboring hamlets of Andagna and Corte.

In the past it was the granary of the Republic of Genoa and Podesteria, today Triora is known as the “town of the witches” owing to a trial held in 1588 and concluded, with a sentence of guilt for witchcraft of a group of local women who, because of their meeting in a secluded place (the Cabotina), were deemed guilty of the impending famine. There is memory of that event in the local ethnographic and witchcraft museum, for the luck of shops and handcraft workshops that display funny sorceress dolls and sell liquor of the witch and snail milk, well-mixed together concoctions of grappa (distilled liquor) and aromatic herbs. The medieval village is an art jewel, steep, rough, built without obstructions, whole in its defense system of gates, arches, alleyways and fortressed-houses.