Bordighera, A Record of a Visit (1997)
The Casa Coraggio today (facing inland).
Bordighera today retains but a shadow of its former grandeur. The town, a few miles from the French border on the Italian Riviera, has spread toward the sea and expanded along the coast merging with the neighbouring Ventemiglia. Further inland are the large hotels, but the English and other northern visitors have long since departed allowing the town to revert to the local inhabitants. The most conspicuous sign of past glories, apart from the architecture, is the thriving tennis club just up the road from MacDonald's former home.
As is so often the case the reality is something of an anticlimax. In my minds eye I had held a romantic image of the house set high above the sea and the writers study still lined with books, looking as if he had but for a moment departed, but time stands still for no one and perhaps this is as it should be. George MacDonald's best memorial is his work and the influence it still has for the good in his readers lives. I believe he would have wished it no other way