The town of Toirano, about 3 km from the sea, has today reached a population of about 2000 inhabitants. Its geographic position and the natural conditions of the area enabled the settlement of man in the Val Varatella since prehistorical times. There are traces of Toirano’s past from the Stone Age, to Roman times, to Byzantine times and up to the Middle Ages, with a historical continuity that is found in few other towns.

Inhabited already in Roman times, in the VI century BC Toirano became a fortified Byzantine village which sat on the bed of the Varatella and the Barescione streams. It is from this nucleus that the medieval town grew under the Bishop of Albenga, who maintained his summer residence here even after 1385 when the feudal rights of Toirano passed to the Republic of Genoa for good.
Surrounded by walls, defended by moats, by the river and by the tower houses all around, the town still boasts two of its five gates, ancient houses, porticos, and loggias. Part of the medieval towers have now become the bell tower of the Church of Saint Martin. The three-arcade bridge over the Varatella stream also dates back to medieval times.

North of the town one can still see the church and bell tower of the Certosa, built in 1425 by the monks of Certosa. They had abandoned the Abbey on Mount St.Peter in Varatella founded, legend goes, by Charlemagne, where they had succeeded the Benedictines at the end of 1200. The Convent of Certosa was destroyed in 1797 with the arrival of the french troupes during Napoleon’s first campaign.
The town’s economy, which today relies mostly on the service industry, still maintains hints of the farming background which was for centuries the main economy of the valley.

The local Ethnographic Museum of the Val Varatella was founded with the aim of documenting the ancient farming economy based mainly on the olive oil cycle. This is done through the reconstruction of small environments, the display of objects, machinery and equipment and through photographs and descriptive panels.

If you make your way up the Val Varatella, not far after Toirano, you can see the spurs of a calcareous massif of grey dolomites, cut by a series of valleys in which there are more than 50 natural caves which are still today being researched by experts worldwide. The caves of Toirano, opened to the public in 1953 after all the necessary structure work, are managed directly by the town council and they are one of the main attractions that the west Ligurian hinterland offers to Italian tourists, with over 150.000 visitors per year.