The most striking village in the valley sits at its head, where the Vara is still a narrow stream and the road climbs toward the passes into Emilia. The Borgo Rotondo — the "round borough" — is exactly what it sounds like: a ring of pastel houses built up against the curtain wall of the 15th-century Fieschi castle, forming an almost perfectly circular street. You can walk it in five minutes and immediately want to walk it again.
Beyond the architecture, Varese Ligure is known for what happens around it. From the 1990s the town led a region-wide conversion to organic agriculture; today the valley is one of the densest concentrations of certified-organic farms in Italy. Buy honey, chestnut flour, and the local cheese in the small shops on the piazza, and ask whoever is serving you which farm to walk to in the afternoon.