On the Riviera di Ponente, sandwiched between the glitzy resort towns of the Ligurian coast, sits the Albenga plain. Dotted with campsites and bungalows, the area developed during Italy’s postwar boom as an affordable refuge for workers to escape the smog of nearby industrial cities like Turin and Milan. While much of the surrounding coast is now given over to boutique lidos, this corner of the riviera is still a place where families gather in the shade of eucalyptus trees to play cards, share picnics and nap through the afternoon heat to the chorus of cicadas. These are the stubborn devotees of villeggiatura: Italy’s mythic, month-long summer break.

The origins of villeggiatura go back to the Renaissance, when nobles would leave their urban palazzos for gilded countryside villas in the hills, for weeks at a time. During the 20th century, however, middle- and working-class Italians made their own claim on it, transforming an aristocratic privilege into a mass ritual. By the 1960s, millions of Italians had come to consider a long summer break a fundamental right, spending holidays in ancestral villages, seaside campsites, or even company-sponsored holiday resorts. It was the era immortalised in Gino Paoli’s 1963 jukebox hit Sapore di Sale (The Taste of Salt), which celebrates “lazy days passing by” at the beach, dreaming “of a different world” beyond the factory and office.

There is something undeniably nostalgic about this picture-postcard image, but the politics that made it possible are worth reflecting on, not least in contrast with our own overworked age. Italy’s enviable leisure culture did not emerge from nowhere. It was the once-powerful trade unions that fought for this right, securing Italian workers........

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