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Forty - five minutes on foot above Camogli , on a ridge in the Parco di Portofino , sits a low grey building . This is the Semaforo Vecchio , and tonight it is yours for fifteen euros . The path climbs to it from Portofino Vetta , through pine and holm oak . The Ligurian coast falls away beneath the terrace . That view is the reason the building exists . For most of the nineteenth century this was a semaphore station . Men worked here reading the sea and passing what they saw inland . The job goes back further than that . During the Napoleonic period the French ran a Chappe optical telegraph from this ridge . Jointed wooden arms on the roof swung into positions , and each position stood for a letter . One hilltop repeated the shape to the next , faster than any horse could carry a message . The Parco di Portofino keeps the building now as a rifugio , and it is deliberately plain . There are ten sleeping places : three bunk beds in one room , and planking on a loft by the entrance for four more . A bed is fifteen euros , or ten if you belong to the CAI , the FIE or the ANA . Nobody meets you at the door , because nobody works here . You book , and an access code arrives by email . At 610 metres the evening turns cold quickly . Carry layers , and carry your own food and water . Confirm what the hut provides when you book , rather than assuming . The thing to take home is not the price , remarkable as it is . It is the ridge at dusk , when the lights come on along the gulf . Up there you understand why anyone built a signal station on this spot .
