Located inland, in a landscape of olive trees, Balestrino was a possession of the Benedictine abbey of San Pietro dei Monti until the eleventh century. In the twelfth century it was transferred to a branch of the Del Carretto family, who retained it until the eighteenth century, when the territory of Balestrino was annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia (1735). In the upper part of the settlement stands the castle of the marquis, an imposing building with sturdy ramparts that was rebuilt in the seventeenth century and given the appearance of a fortified palace. It contains seventeenth-and eighteenth-century furnishings. The hamlet below, with houses in the Ligurian style, was abandoned following a powerful earthquake. The ancient and crumbling parish church of Sant’Andrea is no longer open to the public, but some of its more important ornaments (two old altars of polychrome marble and a splendid pulpit adorned with the coats of arms of the Del Carretto of Balestrino) can be seen in the new church, built in a modern style. The main forms of cultivation in the area are olive groves and orchards.