The Italian town with an English secret

In modern tourism it's not enough to have a good climate and the Mediterranean shuffling its endless cobalt blue beside your beaches. Even Alassio's quick and convenient rail links from Nice down to Milan draw in few non-Italians these days, BBC News reports. Today the attractive seaside town in Liguria is not on the international travel industry's A-list - but it used to be. When composer Edward Elgar and his wife Alice alighted here in December 1903 the couple would have heard English voices all around them. In late Victorian and Edwardian times Alassio - like other resorts on the Italian Riviera - was a place to recuperate and to escape the cold north for the winter. Even then the town's extraordinary English-language library was well established. That it still opens its doors four afternoons a week 136 years after it was founded is largely the work of one remarkably dedicated woman - Jacqueline Rosadoni. Born Jacqueline Poole in London, she came to Alassio almost by accident in 1959. She was 19 and stopping off briefly before going to Florence. But she fell in love with a local plumber: they married and they've been here ever since. She tells me she hasn't been back to England for 35 years. Jacqueline unlocks the heavy doors and we enter the quiet of a building constructed as an art gallery but which resembles a small Edwardian church. The walls are covered with shelves and there are aisles of books - some 18,000 of them, carefully arranged by subject and available for loan. That the street outside is the Viale Hanbury speaks of the era when English money did much to transform what had been a poor fishing village. Rosadoni settles into the librarian's chair she has occupied, unpaid, for 27 years. Even in her time, she recalls, an Anglican vicar would come from Genoa to hold services but the congregation became too small. After that, if a special service was required a vicar would be persuaded down from Nice. Jacqueline smiles ruefully - that generally meant a funeral. Read more