There was a time when travellers spoke of their holidays on the riviera and they were referring to a trip to Italy, or maybe France, but these days just about any coastal area with an eye on attracting tourists is calling itself a riviera.
The word is actually from Italian and means coastline but in today’s tourism marketing lingo the connotation is luxury living by the sea. If you look hard enough, you’ll find several dozen regions around the world that style themselves as “rivieras.”
Here are five of them that have probably never heard of:
1. Chinese Riviera
China is famous for copying consumer goods from other countries, so why not copy destination names? The Chinese Riviera refers to the coastal region near the city of Zhuhai in Southern Guangdong Province. But they’re already fighting over the title because the trendy area on Hainan’s west coast between Sanya Haitang Bay and XianghsuiWan also refers to itself as the Chinese Riviera.
2. Albanian Riviera
Sandwiched between Greece and its Balkan neighbours is the overlooked country of Albania. On its southern shores is a gorgeous coastline that lines the Ionian Sea. Dotted with mountains, castles and sandy beaches, this region is a bargain compared to many of the world’s other “rivieras.”
3. Austrian Riviera
So how does a landlocked country get its own riviera? It doesn’t. You have to go back in time to when the Austro-Hungarian empire spread to the shores of the Mediterranean. In those times, the elite flocked to the resorts near Trieste, which is now in Italy, and south along the coast of Slovenia and Croatia. Travellers still go there today to enjoy a relaxing lifestyle by the sea.
4. English Riviera
England isn’t famous for its warm waters, so to dub the coast of South Devon a riviera might sound like a stretch, but you will find palm trees in Torbay, so maybe it deserves the moniker after all. The town of Torquay is also famous as the birthplace of Agatha Christie so you can always read a book if the sun isn’t shining.
5. Brazilian Riviera
The euphonius beach names of Ipanema and Copacabana are already world-famous, so why does Brazil need to promote its coast with a “riviera?” Because there’s a lot more to the South American country than Rio de Janeiro. The nation’s long coastline has a bounty of beautiful beaches and just a few hours northeast of Rio, you can head to Armação dos Búzios, or Búzios for short, to sample the sands of the dozens of nearby beaches and stay in its many of the Brazilian Riviera’s resorts which range from budget to extravagant.
Have you been to any of these rivieras? What about the original rivieras or some of the many other regions which have adopted the label? We’d like to hear about it in the comments.
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