he French took over the term when the British began popularizing the area as a resort in the early nineteenth century. But the Italian word "riviera," which simply means "seacoast" or shoreline," was used for Liguria, with a capital "R," as far back as the late fifteenth century. The name Cote d'Azur, on the other hand, was only adopted for the French Riviera in 1887. By the 1930s, the entire Riviera had "become a year-round international playground," and remains so today (Andrews xxxvii).
Though the "grand, turn-of-the-century bathing resorts," such as Portofino and Santa Margherita Ligure, are expensive and overcrowded, the Italian Riviera has not yet been so completely overrun as the Cote d'Azur (Downie 74). This is partly because access to the coast towns is limited, somewhat, by the mountainous landscape. In the east, for example, the Via Aurelia and its steep side roads, running from Genova to La Spezia, "haven't been substantially straightened since Roman Legionnaires trudged over them" (D
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